Senior Malaysian government officials at the Public Private Partnership workshop, which took place in Kuala Lumpur from 10 to 11 February 2010.
Malaysia turns up heat on implementing Public Private Partnerships
17 February 2010
Senior officials from public sector focus on projects in education, health and transport sectors
The Commonwealth Secretariat has provided training for senior Malaysian government officials in how to effectively develop and manage Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects.
The Malaysian government requested assistance following the recent establishment of a PPP Unit in the Prime Minister’s Office, which is tasked with spearheading initiatives that propel the Asian country from a middle income to a high income country.
“We believe PPPs will help us to build on our successful privatisation programmes, which have been delivered since the 1980’s,” said Daisy Selvaranee, Deputy Director in the PPP Unit.
Hee Kong Yong, the Commonwealth Secretariat’s lead adviser on PPPs added: “Malaysia has used PPP modalities in many economic infrastructure projects like toll roads, power plants, ports, airports and urban transportation since 1983, and is now looking to use these modalities on social infrastructure projects in various sectors including health and education.”
What is a Public Private Partnership?
“It is generally considered as an arrangement between public and private sectors to deliver infrastructure normally provided by the public sector. There is usually a clear agreement of shared objectives for the delivery of these infrastructures.” – Commonwealth Secretariat’s lead adviser on PPPs.
Mr Yong, along with experts from the Victoria Audit Office in Australia and HSBC, the international banking group, covered the basic principles of PPPs, how they could work effectively in Malaysia, and the most effective way of developing projects.
Over 60 officials from Ministries of Health, Education, Transport, Finance and Law also looked at various case studies which showed off the benefits of PPPs in transport, education and healthcare sectors.
Gangeswari Tangaraja, Principal Assistant Director for Equipment and Information & Communication Technology in the Ministry of Health said that she saw many advantages in using PPPs on “any number of hospital projects, health clinics and nursing colleges.”
“Before attending this workshop, I had no idea about PPPs,” she said, adding that “now I have a good grounding and would definitely want to introduce such programmes. I am looking forward to seeing the benefits future partnerships will hopefully bring.”
This project comes off the back of another PPP training workshop that took place in Jamaica earlier this month, which focused on raising general awareness of partnerships for chief technical officials and senior officials from both the private and public sectors from the Caribbean island.
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