A growing number of developing country governments are interested in using Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) to provide public infrastructure assets and services. This Reference Guide exists to help them. Specifically, it aims to help government officials and other interested parties to answer three questions:
• What are PPPs, and why would we want to use them?
• What kind of policy, legal, and institutional framework do we need to put in place to ensure PPPs achieve their objectives efficiently and effectively?
• What is the process for developing and implementing a PPP project?
A substantial body of knowledge on PPPs has been built up by practitioners in governments, the private sector, international institutions, academics and advisors. This Reference Guide helps readers navigate this body of knowledge. It introduces key topics on PPP, sets out options, and directs readers to examples, and key references where they can find out more.
The Reference Guide is not intended as a Toolkit, setting out how to approach everything. Nor is it a manual of best practice-the state of knowledge on many topics is not yet well enough developed to prescribe best practices (which in any case are situation specific). Rather, it is the user-interface for the body of knowledge, setting out the key topics and issues, providing an overview, and letting the interested practitioner know where to go to learn more.
Version 2.0 of the Reference Guide provides new resources and updated examples. However, readers should not expect to find in this Guide a presentation of the current status of PPPs in any given country or sector. The Reference Guide rather attempts to provide the most relevant examples and resources-whether most recent or older-to help readers inform themselves on the topics at hand.