Procuring Infrastructure PPPs 2018 report offers recommendations to governments to improve the quality of regulations

The report benchmarks the regulatory framework of 135 economies against internationally recognized good practices, scoring them on four elements: preparation, procurement, contract management, and treatment of unsolicited proposals.

Despite the presence of broadly recognized good practices and tools, governments around the world still fall behind in preparing, procuring, and managing effective public-private partnerships (PPPs) that meet the needs of their citizens. Our new Procuring Infrastructure PPPs 2018 report offers recommendations to governments to improve the quality of their regulations and better deliver infrastructure services through PPPs. The report benchmarks the regulatory framework of 135 economies against internationally recognized good practices, scoring them on four elements: preparation, procurement, contract management, and treatment of unsolicited proposals. 

Governments around the world have turned to public-private partnerships (PPPs) to design, finance, build, and operate infrastructure projects. Government capabilities to prepare, procure, and manage such projects are important to ensure that the expected efficiency gains are achieved. Procuring Infrastructure PPPs 2018 assesses the regulatory frameworks and recognized good practices that govern PPP procurement across 135 economies, with the aim of helping countries improve the governance and quality of PPP projects.

It also helps fill the private sector’s need for high-quality information to become a partner in a PPP project and finance infrastructure. Procuring Infrastructure PPPs 2018 builds on the success of the previous edition, Benchmarking PPP Procurement 2017, refining the methodology and scope based on guidance from experts around the world, as well as expanding its geographical coverage. The report is organized according to the three main stages of the PPP project cycle: preparation, procurement, and contract management of PPPs. It also examines a fourth area: the management of unsolicited proposals (USPs). Using a highway transport project as a guiding example to ensure cross-comparability, the report analyzes national regulatory frameworks and presents a picture of the procurement landscape at the beginning of June 2017. Several trends emerge from the data.

The higher the income level of the group, the higher the performance in the assessed thematic areas. Preparation and contract management are the areas that have the most room for improvement across all income level groups (Figure ES1). Performance varies greatly by region. The high-income economies of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Latin American and Caribbean regions perform at or above the average in all thematic areas.

In contrast, Sub-Saharan Africa and the East Asia and Pacific region have the lowest average scores across thematic areas. Contrary to popular perception, stand-alone PPP laws are not significantly more frequent in civil law countries than in common law countries. While 72 percent of civil law economies surveyed had stand-alone laws, 69 percent of common law countries did, as well. However, there are some interesting regulatory trends across regions.

The majority of OECD high-income countries regulate PPPs as part of their general procurement law. Europe and Central Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean have the largest proportion of economies adopting stand-alone PPP laws. Meanwhile, the Latin America and Caribbean region has undergone two waves of regulatory reforms: first by adopting concessions laws in the 1980s and 1990s on a large scale, and more recently through an ongoing series of PPP reforms.

The creation of PPP units is a common trend to support the development of PPPs. As many as 81 percent of the assessed economies have a dedicated PPP unit, which, in most economies, concentrates on promoting and facilitating PPPs. In 4 percent of the economies, however, the PPP unit takes a prominent role in the development of PPPs and acts as the main (or exclusive) procuring authority.