Public Private Partnerships
Strategic Finance Assignment
1) What are Public Private Partnerships?
A public–private partnership (PPP) is a government service or private business venture which is funded and operated through a partnership of government and one or more private sector companies. Public Private Partnership is an arrangement between a government / statutory entity / government owned entity on one side and a private sector entity on the other, for the provision of public assets and/or public services, through investments being made and/or management being undertaken by the private sector entity, for a specified period of time, where there is well defined allocation of risk between the private sector and the public entity and the private entity receives performance linked payments that conform (or are benchmarked) to specified and pre-determined performance standards, measurable by the public entity or its representative.
Essential conditions in the definition are as under: 1) Arrangement with private sector entity: The asset and/or service under the contractual arrangement will be provided by the Private Sector entity to the users. An entity that has a majority non-governmental ownership, i.e., 51 percent or more, is construed as a Private Sector entity. 2) Public asset or service for public benefit: The facilities/ services being provided are traditionally provided by the Government, as a sovereign function, to the people.
Typically, a public sector consortium forms a special company called a "special purpose vehicle" (SPV) to develop, build, maintain and operate the asset for the contracted period. In cases where the government has invested in the project, it is typically (but not always) allotted an equity share in the SPV. The consortium is usually made up of a building contractor, a maintenance company and bank lender(s). It is the SPV that signs the contract with the government