Proceedings of the 14th Meeting of the
Transport and Communications Working Group
22
financially sustainable, and whether it can be fully financed by user fees (so-called hot PPPs) or
whether the public sector shall partially or totally finance the project by means of direct or
indirect subsidies and availability payments (so-called cold PPPs). Affordability appraisals shall
consider the impact of adverse socioeconomic conditions, i.e. macroeconomic risks. In the case
of hot projects, it is important that the willingness to pay surveys are performed. Value-for-
Money and Cost-benefit Analysis of projects shall finally be performed in order to confirm the
suitability of a project to be implemented as a PPP model and assess the benefits generated by
the project in comparison to the investment costs.
Question: To what extent should the institutional setting be changed/adapted to appropriately
implement PPP projects and manage the risks associated with PPPs?
Answer: The consultant highlighted that the institutions shall at least be prepared to
appropriately assess and monitor the impact on the state budget of contingent liabilities and
fiscal risks associated with PPPs. Depending on the number of projects already implemented or
foreseen to be implemented in the country, additional institutional arrangements may be
appropriate which include the set up of a PPP unit and of additional units/departments that
could be involved in the identification and selection of PPPs as well as in their development,
implementation, and monitoring. In the event the country has little or no experience in
implementing PPPs, support might be sought from International Funding Institutions and
Multilateral Agencies for the implementation of pilot initiatives.
Question/comment: PPP is an important instrument for the development and implementation
of infrastructure projects that might be particularly relevant to solve congestion in urban and
metropolitan areas in the future. This requires a number of analyses (i.e. traffic, Value of Time…)
to be performed in order to appropriately address the risks related to the PPPs as well as the
development of specific capacities by the institutions.
Answer: The consultant confirmed that the robustness of the pre-feasibility and feasibility
analysis for the development of PPP projects is key for all PPPs, but particularly for those to be
implemented in urban areas, where projects are not just part of a network, but rather embedded
in a multimodal system of different transport modes. It is thus essential to assess the technical,
functional and financial performance of the project in the wider urban/metropolitan system.
With reference to transport and demand modeling activities, reference was made to a number
of data that are nowadays available to improve the reliability of the feasibility analyses such as
real travel time data from TomTom or Google. This can, for instance, be acquired and used to
calibrate and validate the results of the models.