Infrastructure Public Private Partnerships An innovative concept strayed between failure and success With emphasis of the Egyptian case

Abstract

Public private partnerships (PPPs) in infrastructure projects have long been debated in the literature, from a viable second best policy for a government with a deficit in its infrastructure spending to a failed trial to provide a public service with the assistance of the private sector. Several factors do have an effect on the success rate of such projects, but which factors are necessary and sufficient and which factors are necessary but not sufficient remains a blurry issue in a topic that lags statistical data to support either side. Using the previous literature as case studies in six countries in the United Kingdom, India, Egypt, the United States, Mexico and Chile (five cases are in depth case studies) and this dissertation finds that there are ten primary drivers/factors that are necessary for any economic infrastructure PPP project to have a positive value added -not to fail. This dissertation also takes a closer look at the case of Egypt -with its relatively recent experience in adopting an infrastructure PPP program, and finds that there are several key challenges that were inherent in previous PPP projects in Egypt, most of which were due to inability of financial local markets to finance infrastructure PPP projects, poor capacities of the public institutions and their lack of understanding the governance of PPPs and public opposition due to the perception of PPPs as privatization. Moreover, it remains to be seen whether these challenges will be tackled in the future infrastructure PPP projects or not. Keywords: Infrastructure Public Private Partnerships; Drivers of infrastructure PPPs; Egypt PPP