From the World Bank Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF)
From the executive summary:
There is growing interest in the Caribbean in using public-private partnerships (PPPs) to provide infrastructure. Infrastructure investment needs are significant across the region, to boost economic growth and resilience. Many Caribbean governments are increasingly turning to PPPs to meet those needs, driven by a combination of tight fiscal constraints, and growing appreciation of the role of the private sector in delivering public services. This inclination reflects global trends and experience. Many countries have found that PPPs—when selected, structured, and managed well—can help make the best use of the financial and technical resources of the public and private sectors to provide improved infrastructure assets and services.
Experience with PPPs to date in the Caribbean has been mixed. PPPs are not new in the region, having been used to deliver new or improved roads, ports, airports, bulk water treatment facilities, and electricity generation plants. Many PPP projects have operated successfully for years, delivering high-quality infrastructure facilities. Others have faced challenges. In many cases, the complexity of the PPP development and implementation process has meant long delays in delivering projects; others resulted in questionable value or unexpected costs to governments or consumers. All PPP projects to date were implemented without overarching PPP policy frameworks, as described in more detail below.
This raises a question: How can Caribbean governments navigate the challenges to make the best use of PPPs to deliver improved infrastructure assets and services? This “Caribbean Infrastructure PPP Roadmap” seeks to answer this question. It reviews the outlook for PPPs in the region, by: identifying PPP project opportunities in eleven Caribbean countries1 ; constraints or barriers to successful development of those project opportunities, based on previous experience; and possible actions to overcome these constraints. The Roadmap was developed by the World Bank Group, with inputs from Caribbean governments, private investors, and other development partners, and support from the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF).
This Roadmap identified a potential PPP “pipeline” of 33 projects that are being actively developed as PPPs across 11 Caribbean countries, with a total estimated investment value of USD 2 to 3 billion. These are projects that are actively under development, albeit in some cases at an early stage, and that appear potentially viable as PPPs from a prima facie assessment—from technical, economic, commercial, legal and regulatory, and political perspectives—although detailed appraisal is needed in most cases. As such, this pipeline provides a reasonable estimate of the potential for PPP in the Caribbean in the next two to five years.
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