Were PPP really suitable for the realization of the infrastructure investments in Turkey?
BAHAR BAYAZIT
LAW - LAW - BILKENT UNIVERSITY
Abstract
Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) is a term that comprises a variety of relationships between the public sector and private sector so as to build and operate the infrastructures that are needed to deliver public services. Today, PPP become an important part of public service delivery in Turkey as many of the infrastructure, from hospitals to energy plants, from airports to highways and from bridges to schools are built via PPP models. Even though PPP has become a common method for the realization of works and the provision of public services, there is no accepted definition of the phenomenon. Regardless the lack of definition, it is accepted that PPP projects should assure value for money (VfM) and there is a consensus on some substantial elements of the PPP such as the need of an agreement, the ‘public’ character of one of the parties, partial or total financing by the private sector, and allocation of substantial risks of the project on the private sector. The ex-ante VfM evaluation to decide whether to conduct a project via PPP model and the contract management of the PPP projects when they are implemented are important to assure public interest. In order a PPP method to be suitable for a specific project, it is important that an efficient infrastructure allocation decision has been made, whether such a decision was made can be evaluated through ex-post VfM assessment. However, interventions which are defined as “any action or operation, carried out by public authorities or other organisations, regardless of its nature (policy, programme, measure or project)” (EPEC, Ex-post assessment of PPPs, p.5) affect the outcome of any evaluation. As the interventions made by public authorities form an important data when a VfM assessment is conducted and the legitimacy and necessity of PPP models are globally questioned, it is needed to explore the efficiency of PPP projects. Thus, in this paper, it is aimed to demonstrate whether PPP were really suitable for the realization of the infrastructure investments in Turkey through investigating the total investments made by private sector, risk allocation between the parties, guarantees and the implementation quality of PPP projects.
Keywords
Infrastructure investment, PPP, VfM, interventions
