The United Kingdom has pioneered the trend. Through its Private Finance Initiative (PFI), the UK government makes use of partnership models to develop and deliver all manner of infrastructure, from schools to defense facilities.17 In a typical year close to 100 PPP projects are initiated or completed in the United Kingdom. PFIprojects now represent between 10 and 13 percent of all UK investment in public infrastructure.18
Yet little more than ten years ago, PPPs were barely a blip on the radar screen, and decades of neglect had resulted in deteriorated schools, hospitals, and other public assets across Britain. The introduction of private finance reversed this trend, with more than 100 new schools and 130 new hospital projects alone developed though private financing. Just as the United Kingdom's privatization program of the 1980s inspired governments worldwide to sell off state-owned enterprises, its PFI program has produced scores of imitators.19 In India, $47.3 billion is scheduled to be invested in highways alone over the next six years, 75 percent of it coming from public-private partnerships.20 Japan has 20 new PPP projects in the pipeline.21 In Europe, the volume of PPP deals is doubling, tripling, and even quadrupling year to year in many countries.
Meanwhile in the emerging democracies of Central Europe, PPPs are becoming the delivery model of choice for new infrastructure, with governments viewing the partnerships both as a way to complete projects on time and on budget, and as a means to attract foreign investment. "We are trying to multiply the economic potential of the Czech Republic and implement projects for which the public sector alone has neither the strength nor the resources," explains Jiri Paroubek, the former prime minister of the Czech Republic. "We are striving to make services accessible to taxpayers that we would otherwise be unable to offer."
Across the Atlantic, 20 percent of all new infrastructure in British Columbia, Canada is now designed, built, and operated by the private sector. The United States has been slower to take up this trend. However, with more than half the states passing PPP-enabling legislation in recent years and huge PPP projects under way or planned in Texas, Florida and other states, some analysts predict the United States will soon be one of the world's largest markets for PPPs. In short, the PPP trend is global, accelerating, and encompassing a broad range of infrastructure sectors.