The use of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) for developing infrastructure and improving the delivery of social services in sectors such as transport, water management, water and wastewater, broadband/ ICT, renewable energy, green PPP, schools and health, the renovation of public buildings as well as in legal practices, is hampered by the lack of capacity of governments to identify and implement successful projects. To date, governments at all levels lack clear models on which to base their own projects and programmes. In order to remedy this, UNECE, through its International PPP Centre of Excellence (ICoE), will develop standards and recommendations on PPPs. The road map to develop these was agreed at the meeting of the International PPP Specialist Centres held on 25 June 2013 in Geneva.
Leo McKenna, representing the UK government and co chairman of the UNECE PPP Team of Specialists, responsible for the ICoE, declared: “I am confident, that in time, international best practices in PPPs will become the essential ‘compass’ that can guide governments on the right path to take in developing their PPP projects and programmes. Such standards, developed under the neutral framework offered by the United Nations, will accelerate the development of successful PPPs around the world’.
Celso Manangan, head of the PPP Health Specialist Centre in the Philippines commented: “Our NKTI PPP hemodialysis project has received international acclaim and developed a best practice model, which, if standardized in an easily understood template, would provide a short and simple path to governments to replicate this approach without paying for very costly consultants”.
Dr. Hyeon Park, Executive Director of the Public and Private Infrastructure Investment Management Center at Korea Development Institute declared: “We are interested in hosting the Specialist Centre on Green PPPs by the end of 2013, thus contributing to enhance knowledge sharing and cooperation on PPP worldwide.”
Speaking on behalf of the European PPP Expertise Centre (EPEC), a specialist initiative jointly supported by the European Commission and European Investment Bank, Andy Carty, Special Advisor, highlighted that experience from their 35 national and regional members across Europe showed that every project had its own specific issues and is essentially unique. However EPEC’s broad and varied experience shows that PPP best practice relating to different sectors could be helpful and EPEC would, he said, be in a position to see how best to cooperate with the ICoE and contribute to improved understanding in the field once the Specialist Centres had become fully operational.
Sonja Mezzour, Director of the Moroccan Institute for Renewable Energy, underlined the importance of involving stakeholders and communities in the projects to ensure social acceptance and sustainability.
Participants discussed how ‘best practices’ can become a UN standard or recommendation and agreed that the Specialist Centres would prepare ‘best practice’ documents by February 2014.
For further information please visit: http://www.unece.org/index.php?id=32394
Or contact Jan van Schoonhoven, Executive Programme Leader, at [email protected]
Note to editors
The UNECE International PPP Centre of Excellence was established by UNECE’s Executive Committee in February 2012 to develop international best practices in PPPs and to assist Governments to implement these. The Centre operates as the coordinating platform for Specialist Centres located around the world, which will collect information on best practices.
The Specialist Centre on PPP in Health established by the Department of Health of the Government of the Philippines in November 2012 was the first to become operational.
The following countries prospectively hosting Specialist Centres were present at the meeting: Azerbaijan, France, Germany, India, Japan, Republic of Korea, Morocco, the Netherlands, the Russian Federation, Spain and Turkey.