Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Public-Private Partnerships
E.R. Yescombe
YCL Consulting Ltd., London U.K.
www.yescombe.com
Introduction to PPPs
Public infrastructure
What is a PPP?
Development of PPPs
Concessions …the user pays (tolls, fares, water fees, etc.)
• Old concept – 18th century turnpike roads
→ Franchise / affermage – ‘publicans & sinners’, water in France, rail in U.K.)
PPPs v. privatisation:
• No transfer of public ownership
• Public sector remains accountable to users
• Contract-based not regulator-based
• Main overlap with privatisation relates to transfer of staff
* Public sector normally designs the project and engages private-sector contractors to carry
out construction on its behalf (design-bid-build).
** This would be a PPP in the minority of cases where ownership of the project does not revert
to the public sector at the end of the PPP contract (e.g. some waste management contracts)
N.B.: PPP may be Concession or PFI Model
‘Alphabet Soup’
‘Alphabet soup’:
• BOT build-operate-transfer
• BOOT build-own-operate-transfer
• BTO build-transfer-operate
• BLT build-lease-transfer
• BLOT build-lease-operate-transfer
• BTL build-transfer-lease
• DBFO design-build-finance-operate
• DBFM design-build-finance-maintain (or –manage)
• BOO build-own-operate
etc. etc.
Complex and overlapping terminology is pointless and confusing
The key distinction is between:
• ‘Reverting assets’: At the end of the PPP Contract the assets revert to
public-sector control (unless a new contract, e.g. franchise, is signed);
applies to most PPPs (= all terms above except BOO)
• Non-reverting assets’: Private sector retains ownership & control –
applies only to minority of cases where assets have some non-public use
(= BOO)
Output specification
PPP contract based on output specification – what has to be done but not
how to do it:
• Design and construction:
• PPP school contract: Contracting Authority will specify, say, number of
classrooms of a certain size, but not their layout or how to build them
• Road concession: Contracting Authority will specify, say, that the road
must have two lanes on each side, and meet normal road standards,
but not how the road is to be built to meet these standards.
• Service quality: again specify what is required but not how to do it -
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and performance points (e.g. if the
hospital ward is not cleaned on schedule or to the required standard, or
if accidents are not cleared from the road within a certain time,
deduction for poor service, leading to penalty payments).
• Availability – is the project fully available for use? (e.g. if the roof leaks so
a school classroom can’t be used, deduction for unavailability of the room).
This ensures risk transfer to the private sector, a key aim of a PPP
Power-generation project
Electricity
Investors Lenders Gridco / Distributor
Project
Company
Sub-Contracts Fuel-Supply
EPC Contract Operation & Maintenance
Contract Contract
Toll-road concession
Investors Lenders Contracting
Authority
Project
Company
From sponsors:
• expertise / track record
• arm’s length sub-contracting
• reasonable equity investment
• financial capacity (but not obligation) to provide support to deal with any
financial problems with project
• long-term commitment
From sub-contractors
• Experience in the sector
• Credit standing
• Appropriate penalties / liquidated damages / bonding
Project finance is complex and slow ∴ expensive, and with a high up-front cost
(on top of complexity of PPPs!)
Main reason governments around the world are adopting PFI is that it helps to
deal with budgetary or borrowing constraints
• But PFI Model provides ‘finance’, not ‘funding’ – public sector has to pay
for it over time and so it has a fiscal effect (→ ‘Affordability’)
• Tariff payments by users of concessions are a form of tax anyway?
Main argument by critics of PFI is that the government can borrow money
more cheaply
• Correct to say that the cost of private-sector equity and loan debt in a PPP
project is greater than the government’s cost of borrowing
• But the government can borrow money more cheaply because the lender is
not taking any risk on the project
• Which means that government is taking the risk – needs to be added to cost
of public procurement
• So value of risk transfer in PPPs needs to be taken into account – but
difficult to assess
• And can the government actually borrow all the extra funds in lieu of a PPP
programme?
Power-generation project
Electricity
Investors Lenders Gridco / Distributor
Project
Company
Sub-Contracts Fuel-Supply
EPC Contract Operation & Maintenance
Contract Contract
Low availability
• If plant is to be available, say, 325 days a year, but is only available 300 days
(e.g. due to excess maintenance)
• Capacity Charge is adjusted by 300 ÷ 325
Fuel supply
O&M Contract
Key issue – how much risk can be passed on to O&M Contractor, especially:
• Operating costs other than fuel
• Unavailability = maintenance downtime (planned and unplanned)
• Cost of maintenance (especially replacement parts)
Transport PPPs
Toll-road concession
Investors Lenders Contracting
Authority
Concession Agreement
Parties—Public Authority and Project Company
Term—typically long-term (25-35 years):
• to enable cost + profit recovery
• to transfer long-term risks, e.g. maintenance
Key contract provisions:
• Allocate responsibilities and risks, e.g. land acquisition, connecting roads
• Pre-agreed toll régime, e.g. base tolls + inflation on agreed formula
• Output specification (public sector says what is required not how to do it):
• Penalty régime:
• Service provision / “availability”
• Service quality incl. maintenance standards
• Accommodate change, e.g. extra lanes
• ‘Non-compete’ provisions?
• Termination arrangements
Most risks/obligations passed down to back-to-back sub-contractors
Provides a basis for funding by investors and lenders (equity + debt)
This PFI-Model approach deals with the issue of ‘willingness to pay’ by the
users, but not affordability issues for public sector (‘fiscal risk’)
Project
Company
U.K. Department for Education’s projects (mainly schools) have been a major
part of the total PFI programme:
• approx. 170 projects signed;
• total value approx. £8 billion (≈ US$13 billion).
N.B.: A school is just one type of ‘accommodation’ PPP project in the social
infrastructure sector: same principles can apply to, e.g., hospital, prison, offices.
And same ‘Availability-based’ Contract can be used for other sectors, e.g. roads
(instead of a Concession or ‘Shadow Toll’ contract).
Private sector could take usage risk for public-sector schools, but:
• usage depends on general public policies (and could restrict changes in
policy; cf. toll roads);
• not acceptable in U.K. for private sector to provide teaching in public
schools, only school buildings.
Or private sector could build a school, hand over to public sector, and then walk
away, with public sector making deferred payment?
• transfers construction risk but otherwise is just a simple loan;
• considered public-sector debt from completion of construction;
• has been used in some European countries but not U.K.
Investors in a PPP power station are not told how to build or maintain it:
• design, construction and operation are at their risk;
• just has to be available to produce the agreed output (x MW).
Output specification
Much more complex than a power station:
Without output specification cannot transfer risk from public to private sector:
• If public sector designed the school any construction / operation problems
could be blamed on design, and claims made as in conventional ‘design-bid-
build’ procurement.
• Leaves private sector with long-term maintenance and lifecycle risks;
→ choices such as more cost now and less maintenance later, because have to
budget for whole-life cost of the school.
∴ Stimulates innovation by the private sector.
Payment mechanism
Fixed constant monthly payments – ‘Unitary Charge’ (= service fee: not split as
for PPA)
• Calculated by bidders to cover:
• Operating costs
• Debt service
• Equity return
• Partially indexed for inflation
Risk allocation
Theory:
• Project risks should be allocated to the party
• best able to manage them, and
• best able to bear the financial consequences
Optimism Bias
‘Optimism bias’
• key issue when considering risk assessment for the public sector
= tendency to underestimate costs in a public procurement:
• Underestimation of construction / operation costs, time to construct,
etc.
• Optimism may be needed to get approval for project
• Little career sanction if the public-sector official gets it wrong
• ‘Gold plating’ is further issue with costs of public procurement
Much of the risk of optimism bias → private sector in PPP contract (but some
risks will be retained by public sector)
Risk matrix
Risk analysis (by all parties) based on:
• Identifying all possible project risks (however remote)
• Measuring effect of these risks on project’s ability to service debt
• Looking at what mitigations exist in the project’s contractual structure: e.g.
are risks passed through to sub-contractors?
• Considering whether residual risks are acceptable
N.B.: Lenders concerned about low probability / high impact risks:
• may require a disproportionate amount of negotiation / evaluation
Analysis in blocks, e.g.:
• Site risks
• Construction risks
• Revenue risks
• Operating risks
• Legal / regulatory risks
• Residual-value risks
• Macro-economic risks (interest rates and inflation)
• Political risks (other than legal/regulatory) [t.b.d.]
• Private (debt) finance (can it be obtained, on expected terms?)
The role of insurance also has to be considered:
• Insurance for physical damage and consequential loss of revenue
• Political risk insurance [t.b.d.]
Political risks
PPPs need strong political support – important that this is from government and
opposition, so if there is a change of government, policy does not change.
PPPs also very difficult to negotiate if the Contracting Authority’s staff don’t
want to enter into the PPP – unless there is firm political direction.
Sub-sovereign risk – further issue if Contracting Authority is not central govt.
Causes
• Inexperienced Contracting Authority – poorly drafted contracts
• Aggressive ‘low ball’ tendering, with the aim of renegotiation
• Inexperienced Sponsors – misunderstanding of what they are taking on
• Government / opposition turning PPP into political football
Viability-Gap Finance
Subsidy
Debt guarantee
Mezzanine debt
DFI finance
PPP project cycle can be divided into 7 main stages from Contracting Authority
point of view:
Inception: set up project governance; appoint advisers
Feasibility Study: needs and options analysis, evaluation, procurement plan
Preparation for market: prepare request for proposals; draft PPP Contract
Procurement: pre-qualification; negotiation → preferred bidder; signing
Construction: monitor; deal with any changes*
Operation: ditto
Handback: ensure handback condition
Feasibility study
Benefits:
• information about project costs, and whether these can be met from within
the Contracting Authority’s budget or by user fees;
• identification, quantification, mitigation and allocation of risks;
• a basis for considering how the project will be structured;
• identification of constraints which may cause the project to be halted; and
• ensuring that the project is developed around a proper business plan.
Key topics:
UK Treasury:
‘…PFI should only be pursued where it delivers value for money (VfM), where
VfM is the optimum combination of whole life cost and quality (or fitness for
purpose) to meet the user’s requirement, and does not always mean choosing
the lowest cost bid. (Value for Money Assessment Guidance, 2004)
Issues:
• How to value risk transfer?
• When should you do the calculations?
Affordability
Someone – either the public sector or the user – has got to pay over time
Public object to paying for something ‘the government should provide’ (e.g. a
road) or is ‘provided by God’ (e.g. water supply)
If payment for existing infrastructure – e.g. toll roads – has not kept pace with
costs → difficult to price new infrastructure properly
Procurement procedure
Typical procurement / review stages:
• Pre-qualification (pre-qualify say 4)
• Request for proposals (cut down to 2)
• Negotiation on proposals
• Best & final offer (BAFO) from remaining 2 bidders
• Bid evaluation
• Preferred bidder
• Commercial Close / Financial Close
• No substantive negotiation after appointment of PB
Unsolicited bids
World Bank (PPP Reference Guide):
…there is a place for genuine and innovative [unsolicited] proposals, but these are the
exceptional case. The private sector must put up strong independently analyzed cases
for unsolicited proposals at an early stage, before governments are sucked in to
supporting projects that are financially weak, high risk, will take up significant
human resources of the government, and will likely take a longer than normal time to
implement because of these difficulties.
Undesirable in early stages of a PPP programme
Often fail to produce expected benefits / raise finance / keep to schedule
Tie up limited public-sector PPP expertise, so hamper programme development
Go for ‘low-hanging fruit’ – the obvious easy deals, no added value
Private sector feasibility study is not a substitute for public-sector work –
seldom saves money or time
Difficult to fit within proper competitive procurement procedure:
• Can be done by BAFO prequalification, payment of development fee, bid
bonus for evaluation, Swiss challenge (= right to match) – but none are ideal
Often linked to corruption
Further information:
www.yescombe.com
©YCL Consulting Ltd. September 2013