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Public-private partnerships: Opportunities for Bangladesh
Infrastructure continues to be high on the development agenda of Bangladesh. Yet infrastructure investment levels have continually fallen short of what the government seeks and what is necessary for Bangladesh to meet its goals. This situation has worsened in recent years, with the decline in availability of private sector investment for infrastructure. This situation demands new ways for Bangladesh to improve its infrastructure and the much talked about publicprivate partnerships (PPP) maybe a solution.
Using innovative schemes such as PPPs to provide basic infrastructure is essential for countries like Bangladesh to generate the required investments to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). The government plays a great role in PPPs as it forms a meanS to increase the quantity and quality of infrastructure investment. The problem arises in finding sufficient public funding for infrastructure and in attracting private investors towards infrastructure. For some years the latter was widely seen as a solution to the former, but this is much less the case today, given market conditions.
There have been hundreds of conferences on PPPs arid the laws and regulations that will facilitate the creation of them. In some 'Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’ (OECD) countries, particularly the United Kingdom, there are wide-ranging PPP programs in place. Yet the results in developing countries, such as Bangladesh, have little relationship to the amount of discussion and promotional activity.
The label "PPP” covers a wide range of project structures, with private and public sectors interacting in different
ways. Some of these structures are new and innovative, and some less so. The PPPs could involve public sector risk mitigation with 100 percent private financing or it could be the opposite with private management and 100 percent public financing. It could also be a mix between the two types of ownership.
Even in the most advanced countries and sectors, private infrastructure projects rarely shift 100 percent of the risk to the private sector. Public sector actors often retain certain
project-related risks that the private sector is unwilling or unable to accept (i.e. foreign exchange risk, change of law, regulatory risk, etc).
Another type of PPP model which is becoming more prevalent in some of emerging markets is one in which the public sector essentially outsources the management of a publicly-owned infrastructure asset to a private company, while maintaining the obligation to finance the capital needs of that company with public sector resources. This type of model is increasingly popular in sub-sectors in which strategic investors have a reduced appetite for taking investment risks in emerging markets, but where they are still keen on playing an operat-ing/managing role. Bangladesh Railway has tried this model to a limited extent.
A variant on this category' of PPPs is a blend of public and private sector ownership, where the private sector may not have a majority shareholding position but where the degree of private sector involvement is high enough to provide comfort so that the project will run commercially.
A third category of PPPs involves a mixed public/ private financing or ownership. One of the reasons for the low level of activity in mixed private-public financing PPPs is in difficulties surrounding the mixing of public and private funds. Concerns about the political acceptability of privatization in some countries have also spilled over into concerns about these areas.
A target segment for mixed public-private financing can be defined as where the financial return of a prospective infrastructure investment is either negative or below relevant hurdle rates without pub-
lic support, but the net gain to the economy is above an appropriate hurdle rate. The proposed Padma Bridge can be a prime target for such a structure.
Infrastructure is a high strategic priority for Bangladesh. Bangladesh has managed to continue to grow its GDP despite various adversities, but has been finding fewer opportunities to actually finance its infrastructures on the ground. PPPs could therefore become a good opportunity to ramp up the country's financing infrastructure. We can find the right ways to structure PPPs by taking lessons from other countries.
One visible characteristic of most PPPs to date is that they are very knowledge-intensive. Details matter and the structures are generally substantially more complex than for straight privately-financed or publicly financed projects. A key trade-off is between the time to implement a project, its transparency and political sustainability. These types of projects, which are knowledge-intensive. are in general an area where international institutions have comparative advantage over other local/regional financiers.
The writer Is a banker and economic analyst.