There are four notable countries that have used public private partnerships (PPPs) extensively. In Europe, the United Kingdom (UK) leads the list. The leader in South America is Chile with China leading the Asian countries. The United States of America (US) becomes the fourth.
PURCHASING & SUPPLY: NYASHA CHIZU
The fact is that implementation of PPPs was not that simple and rosy, many hurdles and pitfalls were encountered. The four countries are renowned for their experience in PPPs because they managed to learn from the shortcomings that also overwhelmed other countries around the world. Experience is generally learning from your mistakes and wisdom becomes the capacity to learn from other people’s mistakes.
Zimbabwe is, therefore, privileged to travel a road that is now smoothened.
The lessons from Britain illustrate how its public finance initiatives show how PPPs were used as an alternative to budgetary limits by using off-balance-sheet finance. Britain started implementing PPPs as early as 1992.
Over 300 projects were signed with an aggregate value of £40 billion. It is estimated that the scale is likely to be constant in the medium term and focus is no longer on mega projects, but on bundling initiatives. The major lesson from the UK is that private finance initiatives (PFIs) were recognised as a public investment.
The area of focus in that country was on transport, education, health, prisons, defense, housing, technology, government offices etc.
Investment in transport is estimated at about 25% followed by health at 20% and education and defence at 15%. This was possible because PPP was recognised among the range of procurement options way back in 2004 as illustrated in that year’s budget speech.
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The encouraging factor is that Zimbabwe through the ZimAsset (2013 — 2018) also recognised that PPPs are the effective means to deliver effective public service. The economic blue print identified similar sectors in the UK success story to implement through PPPs. There is significant traction in the area of technology in the transport and traffic management systems that is breaking silo information management among government entities to provide an efficient and effective public service.
The major reason why many citizens are not compliant with Statute is because it is very difficult to undertake a simple process due to the use of old manual systems that require people to move office to office in order to make payment and comply. This has raised the rot of corruptionwhere officers deliberately become inefficient to coerce a citizen to pay in order to jump the queue so as just to be compliant.
One important ideology of the implementation of PPPs is based on the value for money principle. PPP projects were not implemented for political window dressing in the UK, they were implemented to add value to the users. The scale of implementing PPPs in these countries reduced pressure on the fiscus with tangible results that put a smile on the consumer after experiencing quality and affordable services.
Lessons from Chile’s concession programmes demonstrate how pervasive renegotiations can put in doubt the legitimacy of a relatively successful project.
These bad lessons from Chile have a flip side from the Chinese lessons in infrastructure PPP programmes that demonstrate the importance of rule of law and institutions for sustainability. In the US, PPPs have been used to anticipate spending.
Given the vast information available on PPPs, Zimbabwe should never walk blind folded and repeat heralded cases such as pervasive renegotiation of PPPs that put in doubt the legitimacy of the programmes.
It is important to take a leaf from China to embrace the rule of law and institutions for the sustainability of PPP programmes.
Nyasha Chizu is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply writing in his personal capacity. Feedback: [email protected] Skype: nyasha.chizu
