Public private partnership: a factor in provincial development

In a country with so many energy and water resources, the sub-optimal situation of, for example, water and electricity is largely the result of inadequate allocation of financial resources and the shortcomings of the public companies in charge of these sectors. Some 84% of financing is external, 14% is self-financed by REGIDESO, and the State has only contributed 2%. In view of this situation and the decentralization process, we decided to examine the opportunities available to the three pilot provinces to mobilize the local resources needed for their own development. PPP was thus chosen as the hypothesis for our work, in order to respond to this urgent and important need for provincial development. To achieve this, we carried out a questionnaire survey of 35 members of procurement and contract execution institutions in three new decentralized provinces: the city/province of Kinshasa, the province of Kwango and Kwilu in the Democratic Republic of Congo.