Public Private Partnership And The Performance Of Public Enterprises In Ghana: A Case Study Of The Intercity STC Coaches Limited.

Abstract

Public enterprises are used by governments across the world to deliver public goods and services. However, public enterprises, especially, those in developing countries have faced challenges in delivering on their mandate. In response to this, public private partnership has been adopted as a reform strategy to deal with the inefficiencies of these entities. In Ghana, the management of Intercity STC Coaches Limited, in 2015, entered a public private partnership arrangement to revive the operations of the company. Against this backdrop, this study was conducted to assess the impact of Public Private Partnership on the performance of Intercity STC Limited. A qualitative research approach was used to collect and analyze the data of the study. The study employed the purposive and simple random sampling techniques to select the management and the customers of ISTC respectively. The primary data was collected through personal interviews, and secondary data were retrieved from journal articles, books, and reports. The study found that, the public private partnership arrangement has led to an improvement in the quantity of services in terms of fleet size, number of routes and terminals. It has also led to an improvement in the comfort, safety and availability of service. However, the arrangement has not led to a significant improvement in the profit of the ISTC. The study further found out that, despite an increase in the fleet size, the ISTC still cannot compete with the biggest private transport companies. Additionally, the study found out that the partnership arrangement has brought about improvement in the convenience, comfort and safety of service delivery. However, the closure of the land borders because of COVID-19, high operational cost, and the inability to procure new buses have affected the operations of ISTC. The study recommends among others the need for ISTC to improve upon its maintenance culture in order to prevent the frequent breakdown of the buses.