The Imperative of Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) Exploring the

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Jun 9, 2018 - The Imperative of Public-Private Partnerships (PPP). Exploring the Meta Policy Technology. FD Amonya 6.09.2018. Scatter Notes | Infra and ...
The Imperative of Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) Exploring the Meta Policy Technology

FD Amonya 6.09.2018 Scatter Notes | Infra and Debt – 2.1 These scatter notes place pegs on a subject preparing ground for the paper. Overview Africa is making the most drastic changes ever to its physical environment. The roads are being paved. The biggest projects are financed by public debt and bear the tag PPP. The paper will analyse these changes using Figure 1. The state response leading to PPP needs a deeper analytical framework and we are working on it. Why would a state whose primary challenge is disorder of the public space take the pedestal of ‘fiscal constraint’ in pursuing PPP? Note, this is typical case study. The research imports a lens (frame). It does not start with a lens (cf. hypothesis of the Newtonian world). Instead, the research starts in situ in the phenomenon (complexity). The research then draws in the lens as it navigates the phenomenon. See Amonya 2017. The phenomenon is Kampala – Jinja Expressway. The paper will see PPP as meta technology. That is, PPP is a policy imperative. It is an overarching and domineering technology available to statecraft. The state can use it appropriately or the state could use it in a dysfunctional way. The latter inevitably leads to stress. However, that stress might not concern the short-term intention of the dysfunctional use. The genesis of PPP will take us back to physical technologies of the first and second industrial revolutions, and the subsequent First and Second World Wars. We will then look at the policy (social) technologies associated with those jolts. We will move on to the third industrial revolution where PPP emerges as the meta policy technology. Before WW II, infrastructure development was a domain of the private sector (cf. Brunel et al.). The War forced the state to control infrastructure. Now the state is easing away. However, the private sector cannot come in without the state, why? Institutions of the state where created (cf. Bretton Woods structure) and these structures cannot be simply extinguished. Therefore, PPP is an imperative and it is a meta policy technology. The paper must start by refreshing how PPP has been disfigured from the ‘partnership’ that ended adversarial contracts in the UK. Cf. Amonya 2018. We will trace back this partnership to the pre-War mechanics.

The Case: Kampala - Jinja Expressway Is the PPP tag accurate? No. The $1 billion project (circa 3% of GDP) entails private financing of the construction phase. Where is the ‘partnership’ – the joint sharing of complex risks? At most, the contractor will take up a fixed price contract payable at the end of the construction period (say three years). The real risk of this project is demand. Straddling 86 km of pavement alongside an existing stretch must raise questions of demand. When the burden of the questions is placed on the public, it is troubling (cf. Figs 3 & 4). If the demand estimate was robust, the private sector would take up the venture. Later when distress emerges in the 1

project, the PPP tag will suffer. More importantly, the poor are likely to pay heavily in opportunity cost. Remember, case study: an ontology of complexity, a methodology of variety, and an epistemology of explication.

PPP: Meta Technology

PPP

Response Function Complexity of Policy Space

Disorderly Public Space

Fiscal Constraint

Adversarial Contracts

Figure 1: Tension at the Bridge

Figure 2: The Map Credit: https://www.partnershipsbulletin.com/news/uganda-launches-road-ppp 2

Figure 3: Output per Unit of Fixed Capital Formation Notes: Data from World Development Indicators and Ministry of Finance (UGA)

Figure 4: Current Account Deficit (UGA) Source: World Development Indicators (World Bank)

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References Amonya, F., 2018. Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) in Africa: Harking the Holonomic. Forthcoming. Available on this ResearchGate link. Amonya, F., 2017. Parsing Competitive Dialogue in Public-Private Partnerships: Emergence of Capability Search. World Conference on Transport Research - WCTR 2016 Shanghai. 1015 July 2016. Transportation Research Procedia 25 (2017) 5291–5306. Elsevier. Amonya, F., 2017. Policy Space as a Lagrangian Construct: Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) in Africa. Forthcoming. Available on this ResearchGate link. Amonya, F., 2016. Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) on Moulding State Structures: The NonErgodic Africa. Journal of Risk governance and Control: Financial Markets and Institutions, 6, pp.12-18. Amonya, F., and Okello, R.M., 2014. Sub-National Public-Private Partnerships: A Prototype. World Journal of Social Sciences. Vol. 4-1 pp. 176-195. Available at http://www.wjsspapers.com/static/documents/March/2014/14.%20Fred.pdf.

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