Bill English’s views on PPPs and their supposed benefits are reported in the Herald:
New Zealand is a decade behind other countries in using public-private partnerships to accelerate, manage risk, and get value for money from big national infrastructure investments, says Finance Minister Bill English.
English used a speech to the New Zealand Council for Infrastructure Development in Wellington this morning to confirm the Government’s intention to make extensive use of so-called PPPs, in which private investors share in both the risks and commercial upside of building public infrastructure.
The Government would remain the primary funder, with Australian trends showing an 80/20 split between government and private funding in PPPs….
……As a “late starter” with PPPs, New Zealand had the opportunity to adopt world best practice and learn from others’ experience, especially Australia, to catch up a “lost decade” in which PPPs had been shunned for political reasons.
A key advantage of PPPs was their capacity to share the large design, patronage and construction risks inherent in any major infrastructure project, English said. He hoped that Australian experience would allow “a more sophisticated debate” about the use of PPPs than had so far occurred in New Zealand.
We see no acknowledgement here of the disadvantages associated with PPPs.
For the full article in the Herald, click here.
