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Bond University partners Commonwealth Secretariat to enhance public services

12 February 2008

Collaboration on Public-Private Partnership programme

The initiative by the Commonwealth Secretariat to enhance public-private partnerships (PPPs) among member governments will improve cost savings and efficiency in public service delivery.

This will produce quantifiable and permanent procurement expertise that will benefit infrastructure projects, Dr Michael Regan, Associate Professor of Infrastructure at Bond University on Queensland’s Gold Coast, Australia, told Commonwealth News during a visit to the Secretariat’s headquarters in London on 12 February 2008.

PPPs are contractual arrangements between the public and private sector over a specific period of time in which the private sector receives payment for delivering a service or building or maintaining an asset.

Dr Regan said: “PPPs are achieving value for money and lowering the cost of public procurement through optimal risk transfer and sharing between the public and private sector, the life-cycle costing of the project, and the encouragement of innovative design and technology. PPPs account for around 10 per cent or less of public capital expenditure in most economies and most projects are delivered on time and within budget.”

He pointed out that PPPs are beneficial to the government and the public as they deliver better value for money than traditional procurement. He stressed that PPPs offer a systematic form of project evaluation and service delivery which narrows the opportunity for corruption and offers an independent review of processes at every stage, from the bidding stage through to review and contract management.

Dr Regan said public accountability and transparency of transactions in PPPs are critical for public acceptance and support. PPP projects have been used across a number of sectors, including the construction and maintenance of highways, schools, hospitals, ports, airports, court houses, prisons as well as public utilities such as energy and water supply systems.

Some 100 countries around the globe are experimenting with different forms of PPPs, said Dr Srinivas Sampath, PPP Adviser at the Secretariat. He explained that some PPPs involve the ‘build, operate and transfer’ of projects such as highways where the private sector would be responsible for designing, financing and construction of highways for a specific contract period before turning it over to the government. He added that governments are increasingly using PPPs for a number of social infrastructure projects such as health, education and waste management.

“We provide policy development and support, capacity-building and institutional strengthening, technical assistance, and transaction advice and support,” said Dr Sampath. “So far more than 25 Commonwealth countries have benefited from our technical assistance programme.”

He stated that the Commonwealth’s work in PPP contributes towards building modernised national infrastructure, nurturing the private sector and delivering efficient public services which support the mandate of the 2007 Kampala Declaration by Commonwealth Heads of Government aimed at transforming societies to achieve political, economic and human development.

The Secretariat and Bond University are collaborating in strengthening public sector capacities in the design and delivery of PPPs. Through the PPP Leadership Programme, officials from Asian and Southern African Development Community (SADC) regions have been trained. This programme will be targeted for the Pacific region in April 2008 and the Caribbean region later in the year, with training conducted at Bond University.

Bond University is also offering annual scholarships for doctoral studies in infrastructure management that will help applicants from developing countries to deepen their understanding and expertise in this field.