The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) has a long lasting commitment to pro-poor initiatives and activities in Argentina and Greater Buenos Aires in particular. In the past it developed partnerships with state agencies to manage a variety of social programs as well as with the private sector in water and sanitation issues. IIED professionals had a clear vision of the pro-poor character of the PPP project under consideration.
The Municipality of Moreno is one of the poorest in Greater Buenos Aires and the district exhibits some of the worst socio-economic indicators of the entire country. For municipal authorities and functionaries this PPP project represented an opportunity to start dealing with the critical water and sanitation situation of vast areas of the jurisdiction. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about Aguas del Gran Buenos Aires (AGBA), the company in charge of the concession for water and sanitation services. AGBA's participation in the project was rather weak and did not imply any commitment towards PPP arrangements that would benefit the poor. The main concern of the company was the reimbursement of the growing debt held by users of autonomous water systems.
As the PPPUE project in Argentina was only aimed at building capacity of community organizations, local government and private sector bodies to work together in the framework of a partnership-based management model for the provision of water and sanitation services in informal or marginal neighborhoods, the actors involved did not have a shared vision of what kind of formal PPP arrangement to set up, where this would lead, and how to make it sustainable. The project lacked a PPP output vision, a clear idea of what practical PPP arrangement would be established at the end-point of the IPG process undertaken.