19. The Treasury agrees that it should produce an annual summary of the trends in PFI financing costs and that, to provide transparency and a better understanding of the dynamics of PFI equity investment, further information is required on the full range of costs and benefits which investors experience from participating in the PFI market. A complete picture of investor benefits from investing in PFI deals would depend, however, on greater disclosure by investors of the proceeds from the sale of PFI investments, which currently is not disclosed to authorities because it is a contract between two private sector parties.16
20. A listing of all PFI contracts is available on the Treasury's website, and other project information is held in a database which Partnerships UK, on behalf of the Treasury, launched in 2005. The database includes available information on the financing of the projects and the extent of refinancing activity, although at the time of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report in April 2006 considerable further work was needed to make aspects of this information accurate and comprehensive. The Treasury is seeking to improve the information on the database. It has now brought the database up to date for deals which have closed in the last three or four years, but it needs completing for earlier deals. Financial information on the database can help departments assess the value for money of new proposals. For example the Treasury told us that the cost of debt finance in recent PFI hospital deals has been 0.7% above government gilt rates.17
21. The Treasury also collects data on the PFI contract price which the public sector is committed to paying in future years. The government's aggregate forward commitments under PFI deals are then disclosed in the Treasury's pre-Budget report. The Treasury's current information, based on returns from departments of PFI contracts that have been let, shows that the aggregate of these PFI commitments for the years 2006 to 2032 inclusive is £155 billion. The Treasury will be providing information on the proportion of these commitments which is accounted for on the government's balance sheet as part of its next biannual update of PFI data which it expects to be available around March 2007.18
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16 C&AG's Report, paras 5, 6, page 9 and para 3.16; Q 66
17 C&AG's Report, para 3.15; Qq 56-58;