New SADC HQ a public-private partnership project - Salomao
LEKOPANYE MOOKETSI
Correspondent
| Tuesday August 28, 2007 00:00
SADC has entered into contract with a local company, Bongwe Investments which will design, finance, construct and maintain the building.
The SADC headquarters is going to be built at the new Central Business District (CBD) on a plot offered by the Botswana government. The construction of the building is going to take 17 months after which SADC will occupy the premises for 15 years.
Speaking at the signing ceremony last week, SADC Executive Secretary Tomaz Salomao said the PPP concept dictates an agreement whereby a private party enters into an agreement to provide a service for a public entity which will be obliged to compensate the company by means of an agreed monthly unitary payment.
He said it is envisaged that at the end of the occupancy period, the ownership and the responsibility of maintaining the building will go to the public entity. He said when the contract expires, the public entity will have several options to either operate or maintain the facility or offer a management contract to the same or other company through competitive bidding.
The executive secretary said the current SADC Secretariat accommodation arrangement brings challenges to the organisation's efficiency in service delivery, hence the need for improvement.
'We expect to improve our service delivery since all directorates and units of the Secretariat will now be under one roof, thereby providing improved coordination of our day-to-day activities,' he said.
Relating the history of the project, he recalled that in 2002, the SADC Council noted the commitment of the Botswana government to assist the Secretariat to address office accommodation needs.
He said the Botswana government initiated the exercise by allocating the Secretariat a piece of land in the CBD. The Botswana government provided the plot through a 99-year lease agreement.
Following the allocation of the piece of land, a decision for the construction of the new SADC headquarters was made at the SADC Summit which was held in Mauritius in 2004. He said further to this, the summit mandated a Double Troika Committee of Ministers of Finance, known as the Double Troika Finance Ministers Committee, to agree on the preferred technical solution and the procurement mechanism for the new headquarters.
The ministers then established a committee of experts under the SADC Double Troika Member States to facilitate implementation of the project. This committee, assisted by the SADC Secretariat, has been overseeing all the procurement processes.
Salomao noted that it was decided to procure advisory services to assist in identifying the most appropriate procurement mechanism which will meet all the requirements of the Secretariat.
He said upon establishing SADC needs, the Secretariat engaged Price WaterhouseCoopers, assisted by a law firm, to offer transaction advisory services in 2005.
A representative of Bongwe consortium, Simon Ipe said the signing ceremony marked the beginning of what they consider to be an important relationship going forward.
'The importance of this relationship is not only derived from the contractual obligation bestowed upon the parties to the contracts, but also from the significance of the public party, that is SADC,' he said.
Ipe said the collective representation of SADC in terms of its member countries is such that the planned development will not go unnoticed in the respective member states, despite the fact that its location is Botswana.
He said the move by SADC to develop a new office for their needs is reflective of the long-term perspective that the organisation is taking. 'This indeed augurs well for regional cooperation and overall development. On the other hand, the decision by SADC to follow this procurement process is reflective of its dynamism in the rapidly globalising environment,' he said.
He noted that this demonstration of visionary leadership, which is results-oriented, gives character to the concept of African Renaissance.