Closing the Infrastructure Gap: the role of Public-Private Partnerships

This much quoted report prepared by Deloitte Research covers the general concepts of PPPs, regardless the sector in which they are applied. It identifies the trend of governments increasingly looking at the private sector for (co-)financing infrastructure projects. It recognises that globally countries are at different stages of use and sophistication of PPP contracts and it introduces the concept of the PPP maturity curve. It summarises the main arguments to use PPPs and has listed in the annex the answers to the most common objections against it. It also provides guidance to governments wanting to move up the maturity curve. Transport infrastructure has been the largest area of application of PPP contracts because of its emphasis on cost efficiency, the fact that in general the associated user fees are accepted by the public, hence facilitating private financing, and the scale and long-term nature of transport infrastructure projects.