Enhancing value for money in public private partnership projects of Bangladesh

Abstract

With the rapid pace of civilization, Public Private Partnership (PPP) has been emerged as a great solution for meeting the extreme demand of additional public infrastructure in many countries across the globe. Lately, the government of Bangladesh has stepped into PPP through issuance of Policy and Strategy for Public Private Partnership (PSPPP) 2010 and enactment of the Bangladesh Public Private Partnership Act 2015However, expected response from the private investors was not yet received. This might be due to the fact that the offered projects lack sufficient value to attract private investors into PPP. Hence, identifying the significance of Value For Money (VFM) factors appears to be essential for understanding the shortcomings of present PPP projects. This research aims to recognize the importance of VFM factors through three main objectives. First, it attempts to sort out the most significant VFM factors comprising the views of both public and private sectors. Second, it intends to show the contrast the views between the public and private sector officials. Finally, it tries to find out the necessary policy intervention from the findings of the study those are required for preparing lucrative PPP projects for private investors. A mixed research approach has been used for data collection of this dissertation, comprising both interviews and questionnaire surveys. Then, Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) software has been used for data analysis of this study. Findings reveals that top five VFM measures of PPP are, in downward order, government involvement in providing guarantee, realistic assessment of cost/benefit, profitability to the private sectors, government support and private management skills. The result also indicates that both public and private parties have almost identical perception in three fourth of the factors, through there are remarkable differences in few factors including government support, private sector technical innovation, competitive tendering etc. Finally, the study suggests that the best possible thing that government can do is confirming its strong political commitment to march forward with PPP in any condition and extend all sorts of co-operation to private sectors that required for execution of such projects. Government also has to develop its institutional capacity to assess the cost/benefit of offered projects in realistic way and to ensure formulation of profitable projects to private investors. Besides, private sectors also have to put more emphasis on developing their management skills in handling PPP projects, rather than focusing only on making immediate profit from PPP.