The physical infrastructure sector consists of roads and public works, including roads and airstrips in national parks and reserves, water and sanitation services, transport, energy, local government and housing.

Apart from previously stalled projects, key priority areas in energy, roads and transport sub sectors have been completed.

This was made possible through increased budgetary allocations for construction, rehabilitation and maintenance of various infrastructure services, maximization of utility of available resources, enhanced performance of technical departments in the sub-sectors, implementation of key reforms and increased participation of the private sector in provision of certain services through Public Private Partnership (PPPs).

Despite these achievements, the sector continues to face challenges in the provision of services.

A dilapidated physical infrastructure has been a major disincentive to investment in the country. The country cannot sustain or even afford to rehabilitate the infrastructure to the degree required. The sector requires additional funding and measures should be taken to improve the absorption capacity of the sector.

Who says that the infrastructure facilities and utilities cannot be privatized and that they are best left in the hands of central government and local authorities' control?

Experience in some developing countries clearly indicates that our government and its host of civic authorities could do better by ceding the running of many of the services they render to the public and the ownership and control of other investments to the private sector.

Infrastructure such as highways, bridges, railways, rural electrification and other facilities could be sold to private operators. The roads could be leased to companies which would then be permitted to charge tolls in exchange for keeping the highways in good repair.

The trends in expenditure analysis indicate that there has been a general under utilisation of both development and recurrent expenditure.

It is fair enough to say that the government does not have enough funds to maintain and create new roads but what do you say in situation where you are unable to spend what you have in the bank? Between 2003/04 and 2006/07, the average under utilisation of recurrent expenditure funds stood at 21% while that of development expenditure for same period stood at 20 per cent.

This has improved from a low of 37 per cent in 2003/04 to 24 per cent in 2006/07. It is obvious that it takes ages before decisions are made on repairs and re-surfacing by the government and civic authorities, resulting in the inability to spend the money allocated in the budget for the purpose.

The situation arose from government policies which abandoned the policy of automatic employment of university graduates, including engineers, leading to its failure to keep pace with attrition of these professionals from government services.

As a result, the capacity for managing contracts has dwindled. The situation has been made worse by red tape and inane procurement procedures which are apparent more obsessed with closing loopholes to prevent perceived corruption than with delivering services.

The tradition right now is that you only start preparing a project after the money has been committed to it in the national budget. The effect is a situation where more energy and man-hours are wasted on preparing proposals than actually building the infrastructures. The consequence is that money that might be better used on the projects that are ready to go are left unspent in the budget.

These major challenges in utilisation of development funding are projected to improve by addressing limited and delayed exchequer releases, procurement bottlenecks, stringent donor conditionality and general lack of absorption capacity, among other issues..

Privatisation of such services will assist the Government to emerge from its current development crisis. The measure will reduce the government's involvement in the economy to a maximum and solve the ever deepening vicious cycles of bad services, non performing assets, embezzlement of public money and corruption.

Despite the allowance to claim income tax relief for the private organisation that undertakes infrastructure development more need to be done such as exempting materials purchased and utilized in the building of roads by private organisations from VAT.

This would assist in rapid development of infrastructure in the country. The sector should also benefit from private-public partnership and floatation of infrastructure bonds. Since the funding is tied to specific projects there would be more incentive to complete them on schedule and budget.