The roles of national and sub-national agencies

2.24  All the countries discussed so far have undertaken many PPPs in areas where service responsibilities lie with sub-national governments or agencies. The role of national agencies relative to sub-national ones usually reflects legal and fiscal relations between these levels of government, deriving from the constitution and existing budgetary practices.

2.25  In the UK, there are many PPPs that have been entered into by Local Authorities. These access advisory support from national level agencies, and all local government PFI projects are approved by a central government inter-departmental committee chaired by Treasury. In South Africa, the oversight role of the national PPP unit has already been mentioned. It has also played an important role in developing standards and procedures to improve the quality of PPP transactions. The legislation recently passed in Brazil envisages a role for a national level entity to establish procedures for contracting PPPs and to identify projects that should be taken up as PPPs as a priority.

2.26  Other countries have adopted a more decentralized approach. In Canada, several of the provinces (for example British Columbia and Quebec) have their own cross-sectoral PPP units. The federal government created an agency, the P3 Office, to act as a resource center and promoter of the benefits of rationale for using PPPs, rather than in a more hands-on advisory role. This has included the development of information resources including a portal and guides and "self-help" tools.

2.27  The national government in Australia has virtually no role in state level PPPs and instead has largely focused on PPPs for services for which it, as national government, is responsible. State governments have taken responsibility for developing PPPs for the services they are responsible for with very little involvement by the national government. The states have established their own information-sharing structures, with a PPP forum, for government policy-makers, meeting annually, and a PPP working group, for the heads of PPP agencies, which meets more often with a mandate to coordinate over the project pipeline, provide consistent (though separate for each state) guidance, and try to develop standards for contract principles and drafting. However, as noted in Box 3, Brazil is intending to establish capacities in the center to offer detailed guidance to the states in the development of PPPs. Table 1 summarizes the main functions performed by existing cross-sectoral PPP units in a number of different countries.

 

Table 1 - Functions of Cross-sectoral PPP Units

 

 

Framework
law
enacted

Nature of
PPP unit
established

Approval
power
over
PPPs**

Intensive
project
specific
advice

Role as
project
developer
(a)**

Role in
contract
over-sight**

Resource
center
***

PPP
guidance
material
***

Funding for
preparation(b)

Australia: Victoria

 

①

 

 

 

 

 

Canada:

British Columbia

 

③

 

(f)

 

Ireland

(c)

 

(d)

 

 

 

Italy(h)

①

 

 

 

 

Netherlands

 

①

 

 

(g)

Philippines

②

 

 

South Africa

 

①

 

 

U.K.(i)

 

④

(e)

(f)

 

Notes:

*  "PPP unit" in this table means a cross-sectoral unit. Legend for this column: ① = unit is part of ministry or department; ② = autonomous or quasi-autonomous administrative unit; ③ = public authority or publicly owned company (outside civil service); ④ = public-private joint venture company; x = no distinct cross-sectoral PPP unit exists.

**  Refers to the dedicated PPP unit.

***Might be provided by the dedicated PPP unit or by another cross-sectoral department or central ministry.

(a)  Greater responsibility than an advisor and charges fees that are based on some measure of performance (e.g. achievement of milestones or close of deal).

(b)  Refers to funding (outside the normal budget) to pay for consultants working with the line department or local government, not with the PPP unit.

(c)  In Ireland, Central PPP Unit (dealing with policy and general PPP procurement issues) is ①; National Development Finance Agency (giving advice about financial structuring, financing, and risk evaluation) is ③.

(d)  In Ireland, the National Development Finance Agency gives project-specific advice about financing and financial structuring. The Central PPP Unit was involved in project-specific work for the pilot projects so that they could get hands-on knowledge to develop the policy and guidance material. But now, they do not become involved in specific projects.

(e)  Partnerships UK prepares a report for each local government PFI project; the report goes to an interdepartmental committee that has the power of approval.

(f)  Can be requested by its clients (line departments and local governments) to play a role in oversight and monitoring, but there is no obligation to use the unit for this purpose.

(g)  EU provides grant funding for the transaction costs for some large-scale transportation PPPs (rail and roads).

(h)  This refers to the central PPP unit. There are also PPP units of various kinds in six of Italy's regions. Certain regions have considerable autonomy.

(i)  This row refers just to Partnerships UK.

Source: World Bank analysis