PRIVATE PUBLIC PARTNERSHIP (PPP)
Worldwide, PPP in water and sanitation is currently being used as a solution to the problems that urban water authorities are experiencing (World Bank). In many countries, such PPP frameworks have work well while in other countries it has been total disaster! As mentioned in Chapter Three what is crucial is how the PPP is framed and the “modus oparendi” is put in place.
Some of the benefits of public-private partnerships for state and local governments include:
(a) Public-private partnerships are an effective ways of financing, managing and operating roads and other infrastructure facilities while minimizing taxpayer costs and risks.
(b) The private sector provides the finance needed to implement projects
(c) The private sector delivers better services to taxpayers and the public in general
(d) Public-private partnerships maximize the strengths of both the public and private sectors offering taxpayers more efficiency, accountability, and cost and time-savings services
(e) The private sector is ensured of making profits by gaining some privileges in importing materials to be used in the implementation of the PPP projects
A MULTI-ACTOR APPROACH TO PPP
Our multi-actor approach involves working with multiple parties based on consensus-building, participatory decision-making on programme implementation. What is crucial in multi-actor approaches is to build the synergy that will keep the partnership on track. Thus, when done well, multi-actor engagement builds the combined as well as the individual and organisational capacities of actors within the system, and enhances the quality of the policies and regulations that influence their interrelationships. This results in a more effective and more sustainable larger system. It is important to state here that PPP projects are complex arrangements; they are difficult to implement in the context of developing countries’ weak institutional capacity and economic volatility and involve significant transaction costs. Thus, the essence of working with a multi-actor system is to establish a PPP that would reinforce connections between actors who did not previously relate to one another, or who did so ineffectively or antagonistically – despite having interests in common.
The idea behind a multi-actor approach is to build broad-based framework for financing the PPP arrangement. Definitely, even within PPP Funding for water and sanitation is required for new capital investment. There are issues of recurrent expenses of operations not mentioning large capital maintenance and costs of capital (interest payments on loans and any required dividend returns to equity providers. All these issues will be dealt with in a multi-actor approach in which together we shall work out a plan that would bring in other actors in order to spur the PPP. Below are two figures that show a conceptual framework of the multi-actor approach towards establishing the PPP in water and sanitation services.
