One offshoot of the rapid growth of infrastructure PPPs is that countries remain at vastly different stages of understanding and sophistication in using innovative partnership models. Each country-and even individual states and localities-takes its own path in developing infrastructure PPPs. Many factors play a role in development including local geography, political climate, the sophistication of the capital market, the forces driving formation of partnerships and the factors enabling their creation. Nevertheless, three distinct stages of PPP maturity can be observed across the world (see figure 2).
Many governments are still at the first stage of PPP development including designing the partnership policy and legislative framework, getting the procurements and contracts right and building the marketplace by encouraging the private sector to bid on these kinds of contracts. Unfortunately, some jurisdictions at this stage seem to be charging headlong into infrastructure partnerships without a deep understanding of what has worked and what hasn't in other cases-putting themselves and others at risk of repeating earlier mistakes in other jurisdictions.