The delivery of surface transportation infrastructure facilities by PPP is a worldwide development, driven by the demands of a growing global economy and the events such as:
• Establishment of the European Common Market;
• Creation of the European Union;
• Establishment of the South American Common Market;
• Rapid economic expansion of the economies in China and India; and
• Emergence of such nations as South Africa and Vietnam.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s spawned numerous sovereign nations in Central and Eastern Europe seeking membership in the European Union. This second wave of countries seeking to join an expanded European Union has spurred increased interest in PPPs as a means to expedite the upgrading and expansion of surface transportation infrastructure needed to knit the logistics fabric of Central and Eastern Europe with the more developed and prosperous Western Europe. Among the Western European nations, those countries with the most highway miles delivered and operated by private concessionaire companies include Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, and England. In contrast, Greece, Austria, and Norway have only public concessionaire companies21
Transportation infrastructure is widely recognized as a major prerequisite for economic expansion, especially in the case of developing countries. A major impetus for the use of PPPs to deliver transportation infrastructure in developing and under-developed nations has been the various international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, the European Investment Bank (EIB), and the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development (EBRD).
The following vignettes discuss in varying detail the use of PPPs to finance and/or develop transportation infrastructure in various countries grouped by region. In addition to describing the transportation PPP activity by selected countries around the work, the following pages also discuss whether legislative changes were required to enable government agencies to engage in PPPs to overcome the fiscal impediments to developing transportation infrastructure22.
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21 Fayard, Alain, Private Sector Participation for Highways in the EU Legal Framework. French Road Department, Paris, France.
22 Largely drawn from: Global Survey of PPPs: New Legislation Sets Context for Growth, Ratings Direct Research, published by Standard & Poor's, April 14, 2005 and other recent articles on PPP use overseas.