17. All authorities normally receive information about the financing arrangements of their PFI project companies, including the investors' expected returns from the project, when the companies bid for the contract and when they seek the authorities' approval for a refinancing. In addition, the Treasury's standard PFI contract now allows public bodies to ask for information which the project company has made available to its lenders, as well as information which will assist the monitoring of service performance. Neither the public bodies concerned, nor the Treasury ask for information about what the investors are earning. Yet information on how much PFI investors are earning is relevant to monitoring the cost-effectiveness of the projects.14
18. Despite the fact that the private sector normally discloses information about investor returns to enable the sharing of refinancing gains to be computed, public bodies in 16 out of 36 projects failed to respond with appropriate information when, on our behalf, the National Audit Office asked them to show the extent to which the returns to investors had changed following the refinancing of their projects. We have asked for the outstanding information to be collected by the National Audit Office.15
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14 C&AG's Report, para 3.13; Qq 59-66
15 C&AG's Report, para 3.14, Appendix 9; Ev 48; Qq 4-19, 43