Government has launched the Public Investment Management System (PIMS) to ensure effective and efficient management and delivery of infrastructure projects.

The PIM system is part of the grand reform agenda of government to electronically integrate all financial management operations, and bring efficiency to government business.

It aims to establish well-defined and transparent guidelines and procedures for project selection to ensure that only viable projects with significant economic benefits receive funding.

Also, it is to implement appropriate procedures for tracking project implementation and evaluating the impact of investment spending.

Launching it, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, the Minister of Finance, said the design of a PIMS, which enhances the quality of public investment by strengthening the links between the National Medium-term Development Strategy, National Infrastructure and Sector Plans and the annual budget was in order.

He said the government was adopting a multi-pronged strategy to enhance public investment management and the productivity of public investment, including institutionalizing the legal and regulatory framework to guide and enforce PIM operations in the country.

Mr Ofori-Atta said the Ministry, as part of the effort at improving the regulatory framework for PIM, had also initiated processes for the passage of a PIM regulation by Parliament, with associated guidelines and templates to further guide Ministries, Departments and Agencies, the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies and State-owned Enterprises in their project preparation, prior to submission of projects for financing.

There is also a move to operationalize PIMS to consolidate all the currently scattered project systems in various MDAs/MMDAs/SOES to allow for a comprehensive view of projects to inform public policy and strategy.

Mr Ofori-Atta said consistent with the grand agenda of integration, the PIMS would run as a database for all public infrastructure projects, irrespective of their funding sources.

It will transmit prioritised coded projects through the Public Investment Plan (PIP), the budget module and implemented in GIFMIS financial, he said.

In this direction, a high-level PIP Working Committee has been established at the Ministry of Finance that will review a project analysis and appraisal memorandum submitted to it the Public Investment Division (PID).

The Working committee will prioritize, and rank projects that have been judged acceptable from a technical standpoint, to feed into the pipeline of projects that would ultimately be considered by Cabinet.

“The PIP will be the source from which projects are selected for funding and implementation in the annual budget,” the Minister said.

He said there are also plans to increase private sector participation in investment projects through Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), in view of the narrow fiscal space to undertake huge capital infrastructure projects.

Mr Ofori-Atta said the government was currently looking at leveraging existing resources to invite the private sector to participate in the delivery of public infrastructure, especially in the transportation and energy sectors of the economy.

Mr Henry Kerali, World Bank Country Director, said Ghana’s lower middle income status required improved productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness of public expenditures and more sustainable public finances to mitigate financing costs, especially at the time of high demand for development spending.

He said it was critical to ensure that Ghana’s PIM framework delivers strategic and cost-effective capital investments, through sound investment project cycle management.

“We believe that the establishment of the PM system will help resolve most of the existing challenges and enable timely linkage of all capital projects to the national budget,” Mr Kerali said.

He expressed the hope that the new PIM system would bring clarity in roles and responsibility that hinder the effectiveness of implementing capital projects and help government to focus on high impact capital projects in the midst of scare resources.