public-private partnerships

Averting a gas shortfall in Ukraine through a World Bank guarantee

Photo: David Lawrence / World Bank Group

One September afternoon, my boss, Pankaj Gupta, popped his head into my office. He had some ideas about how the novel use of guarantees might help solve a type of problem we had not faced before. The Energy and Extractives Global Practice had received a request from Ukraine. The problem was the country was heading into the 2014/15 winter with a large gas shortfall.

These were not easy times for Ukraine, which was in the throes of armed conflict on its Eastern border. With an economy in turmoil, the credit rating agency, Standard & Poor's, had dropped Ukraine's credit rating two notches in the last year. The rating now languished at CCC, or very speculative and non-investment grade. This made finance, the life-blood of service delivery, difficult to access and expensive.

Kigali Water: Lessons from one of sub-Saharan Africa’s first water PPPs

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Photo: People Image Studio | Shutterstock

This World Water Day, the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) is celebrating the success of the Kigali Bulk Water Project in Rwanda’s capital.

The large-scale water treatment plant, due for completion in 2020, will produce 40 megaliters of clean water per day, equivalent to one-third of Kigali's total supply. Water will be drawn from the Nyabarongo River to be treated before distributing a clean supply to up to 500,000 domestic, commercial, and industrial customers. Kigali Water is one of the first water projects to be developed using a public-private partnership (PPP) model in sub-Saharan Africa.

Breaking new ground: growing the digital economy through cyber risk reinsurance PPPs in EMDEs

Photo: ItNeverEnds | Pixabay Creative Commons

The digital economy has emerged as a key driver of growth and development across the world. According to Huawei and Oxford Economics, it accounted for 15.5% of global GDP in 2016 and this share is expected to increase to 24.3% by the year 2020—growing 2.5 times higher than the overall growth of the global economy.

However, along with rapidly increasing digitization, we are witnessing an exponential increase in cyber risks. These have potentially huge financial impacts that could place entire economies and societies in jeopardy. Such threats now typically include privacy breaches, cyber fraud, denial-of-service attacks, and cyber extortion. There are many examples just within the last few years. For instance, a cyber attack on Ukraine’s power grid in 2015 caused serious power outages, and in 2016, the Central Bank of Bangladesh lost $81 million in a cyber heist. That same year, more than 3.1 billion records were leaked globally.

While traditional approaches such as establishing computer emergency response teams and national cyber security agencies are important, there is a need to engage more actively with both public and private entities through new institutional structures, new technologies, and new business models. Cyber risk insurance is one tool that can help address these challenges.

Behold the White Knights! New research on institutional investor participation in financing EMDE infrastructure

Photo: Grzegorz Zdanowski / Pexels Creative Commons

Some regard institutional investors—with their deep pockets—as the white knights filling the huge investment gaps in infrastructure development in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs). The IMF estimates that some 100 trillion dollars are held by pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, mutual funds, and other institutional investors. Unquestionably, the long-term nature of their liabilities matches the long-term financing requirements of infrastructure projects. So, it’s no surprise that institutional investors are seen as the white knights of infrastructure finance.

Harnessing the Nile’s potential through private finance

Photo: Jorge Láscar | Flickr Creative Commons

The potential economic benefit from the cooperative use of the Nile’s water is estimated to be worth well over $11 billion—from irrigation and hydropower generation alone. But being able to harness those benefits is a far reach; the Nile Basin—a vital source of drinking water, irrigation, hydropower and transport—has a growing need for infrastructure investments to attain the full potential of this resource. Many of these infrastructure investments need to be coordinated between the basin’s 11 countries to ensure they are creating mutual benefits and are not causing harm to neighboring countries.

The Nile Equatorial Lakes Subsidiary Action Program - Coordination Unit (NELSAP-CU), one of the Nile Basin Initiative’s two investment programs, plays a prominent role in the region’s development. NELSAP supports poverty alleviation, economic growth, and the reversal of environmental degradation in the sub-region through cooperative development and water management. Between 2005 and 2015, we mobilized $90 million of cumulative finance for pre-investment programs (e.g. the Lake Edward and Albert Fisheries Project) and $930 million for investment projects (e.g. the Regional Rusumo Falls Hydroelectric Project).

This International Women’s Day: let’s design infrastructure better

Photo: Carol Mitchell | Flickr Creative Commons

As the backbone of development, infrastructure provides vital support for the twin goals of poverty reduction and shared prosperity. Considering the different needs, roles, and responsibilities of men and women in infrastructure design makes the achievement of these goals more sustainable.

Women and men face constraints both as beneficiaries and producers of infrastructure services. For example, there can be inequitable access to roads, financing for electricity connections, or clean water. There are also inequities in the infrastructure business value chain: Do utilities have a balance of women and men on technical and leadership teams? Is there diversity on boards, with regulators or policy makers? Are women-owned firms in supply chains?

The next Costa Rica? PPPs in Nicaragua are making that possible

Photo: Devin Poolman | Flickr Creative Commons

Nicaragua’s Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) program is taking off. In less than a year, the country has moved quickly, overcoming hurdles to produce a PPP law, supporting regulations, and a well-staffed PPP unit. Its first deals are getting closer to fruition—the World Bank Group (WBG) team working on PPPs in Central America has just received four pre-feasibility studies for its top projects. Two of these are moving fresh out of the pipeline—the Pacific coastal toll road and a cruise ship terminal and marina in San Juan del Sur.

Learning from Japan: PPPs for infrastructure resilience

Also available in: Español | 日本語

Photo: MediaFOTO/PIXTA

In March 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake struck Japan, unleashing a tsunami that left some 20,000 people dead or missing. Sendai, the capital city of Miyagi Prefecture and a regional economic hub, was heavily affected by the disaster. About 500,000 residents in the city lost access to water, and the city’s primary wastewater treatment plant was completely submerged by the tsunami. Also, the tsunami damaged 325 kilometers of coastal railway assets and flooded about 100 kilometers of national highway in the Tohoku region, leading to the immediate closure of inland transport access to the devastated towns in need of assistance.

Four years later, while the recovery effort from the earthquake and tsunami was still underway, a private consortium signed a 30-year concession to operate Sendai Airport, making it the first state-owned airport in Japan operated by the private sector. This success was welcomed by policymakers and public-private partnership (PPP) practitioners with surprise—how could it be possible for a private operator to make a long-term investment decision in such a disaster-prone region?

PPP laws in Africa: confusing or clarifying?

Between 2004 and 2017, some 30 African countries have adopted laws regarding Public-Private Partnerships (PPP). If we were to add to this list the countries that have implemented PPP policies, and those who are in the midst of drafting PPP laws, the tally would rise, leaving us with less than just 10 African countries that are entirely without a PPP framework.

What this tells us is that the calls by international financial institutions have been heard by decision-makers in Africa: a quality PPP legal framework will not only help identify successful projects, but it will guide those projects effectively and transparently towards closure, all the while ensuring development goals are met and investors are satisfied.

But how does reality measure up to the theory? How many projects, based on PPP law, have actually reached financial close? Given the time required to prepare a PPP, it is maybe too early to see PPP laws translated into concrete PPP projects, especially as more than 20 countries have in fact adopted their laws only in the last five years.

The APMG PPP Certification Program: Q&A with Abdul Nafi Sarwari

The APMG PPP Certification Program enables participants to take their skills to the next level, and the Certified PPP Professional (CP3P) credential is a means to officially convey that expertise and ability.

At the core of the program is the PPP Guide, a comprehensive Body of Knowledge that distills globally agreed-upon definitions, concepts, and best practices on PPPs. The program is an innovation of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), and the World Bank Group (WBG), with financial support from the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF).

Whether you’re thinking about signing up, or already enrolled, in this series we share some insight from practitioners who have already passed the test. This week, we caught up with Abdul Nafi Sarwari, a Senior Financial & Economic Specialist for PPPs with the Central Partnership Authority within Afghanistan’s Ministry of Finance. Read his answers below.

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