It is common to set up a national or local unit solely focused on setting policy and promoting and advising on the procurement of PPP projects. Globally there are at least 150 such units.3 The majority of these organizations have been set up as government agencies, often within the ministry of finance, but there are a handful of examples where they are PPPs themselves. For example, Partnerships UK is 51 percent owned by private-sector parties;4 in Germany, Partner schaften Deutschland has been set up recently with majority ownership held by the federal and state government and 28 percent by private-sector companies.5 These units aim to become the knowledge and expertise centers that support the wider procurement.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) has recognized that institutional knowledge is key to success and has sought to supplement existing PPP networks, through the European PPP Expertise Centre (EPEC), which brings together the public-sector PPP taskforces across the European Union (both member states and candidate countries).
Some of the more mature regional infrastructure markets have sought to help other regions. For example, Partnerships UK assisted in the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa's publication Attracting Investors to African Public-Private Partnerships: A Project Preparation Guide,7 and they also regularly run training courses on PPP for countries across the globe.
The challenges of building transaction capacity will be different in every country and region, but getting it right is at the heart of any successful infrastructure development. The approach taken by the EIB to provide a forum to support regional liaisons is one model that can be usefully applied across the world.