The Prime Minister has welcomed discussions on new draft policy frameworks which she says will enable "greater scrutiny" of the performance of State-owned public enterprises.

Giving the keynote address at a workshop on Tuesday, which discussed the Ministry of Public Enterprise’s Overarching Policy for the Provision of Public Services and the updated 2023 Public Private Partnership Handbook, Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa said she was pleased with the assistance of the Asian Development Bank’s Private Sector Development Initiative (PSDI) which assisted the Ministry to formulate the policy frameworks.

She said the frameworks will assist the Government expand its traditional approaches to providing essential public services, such as education, health care, and infrastructure.

"Maximising public welfare will always remain our Government’s underlying objective and the overarching policy for the provision of public services will provide us with a framework to assess the best ownership and control arrangements for the delivery of public services in Samoa," said the Prime Minister.

According to Fiamē, the frameworks have three inter-connected driving forces behind their formulation: (1) ensure greater focus on identifying services that should be undertaken by public bodies (also known as State-owned enterprises/public enterprises) than by government ministries (2) ensure greater scrutiny of the performance of public enterprises and corrective actions taken by the Samoa Government where necessary. Part of this scrutiny will involve challenging SOEs to show that they have actively considered the potential for the use of Public-Private Partnerships [PPPs] to add value (3) to ensure there will be an automatic screening of PPP potential for the larger projects which may require budget and/or grant funding. 

The Prime Minister said it is the responsibility of any government to ensure that the community receives the public services that have been promised, at the expected level of service, and in a manner that reduces the impost on the taxpayer and user and her administration is committed to taking on that responsibility.

"PPPs are an important tool to be utilised in this endeavour. There is strong evidence internationally that PPPs can add value if suitably structured. Their potential in Samoa is yet to be fully realised," added Fiamē. "The updated PPP Handbook that will be discussed today [Tuesday] incorporates lessons learnt since Samoa’s initial PPP Handbook was released in 2017.

"Prudent use of PPPs offers opportunities to support private sector involvement in public infrastructure development, leverage private capital, enhance public service delivery, and provide better value for money outcomes to the taxpayer, in line with the Pathway for the Development of Samoa (PDS) 2022-2026."

Fiamē then told the workshop participants that she looked forward to hearing from the presenters on the new draft overarching policy and the updated 2023 Public Private Partnership Handbook.

"Since you will all have a role to play in the application and implementation of these policies/frameworks, I am very pleased that you are all here to participate in this important workshop and encourage your feedback, which will be used to finalize these two documents for submission to Cabinet later this year," she said.