Conclusions to The Rise and Fall of Public-Private Partnerships

The private sector has already passed judgment on the future of public-private partnerships (PPPs). Private investment in infrastructure will increasingly focus on PPPs involving highly secure revenue streams and strong forms of private sector risk mitigation, including greenfield, wholesale, and build-operate-transfer (BOT) projects, which do little to reform the infrastructure sectors that host them. A key question is how soon will donors and MDBs who support PPP advocacy free themselves from misconceptions regarding PPPs, such as the enduring argument that there is no alternative to private investment in most countries? In many cases governments can do much more to generate own-source revenue and improve their management of public investment. PPP advocacy endures because of a combination of free market ideology, the need to respond to a succession of global infrastructure-related challenges and crises, and strategic self-interest of members of the development community. These reasons help explain the continued existence of the PPP paradox described in the introduction to this book-although a mounting body of reliable evidence exists regarding the lack of PPP success in developing countries, such projects are still tremendously over-sold by advocates.