Saleh Fareed
Saudi Gazette
The second day of Jeddah Economic Forum kicked off with the discussion of PPP Readiness and the participating panelists agreed that Saudi Arabia should consider the PPP option and If properly designed and implemented, PPPs can bring real benefits in terms of helping the government to finance infrastructure investment in a more efficient way, freeing up scarce resources to allocate them to other national spending priorities.
Arvind Mahajan, head of infrastructure, government and healthcare services for KPMG in India, said in his speech that Saudi Arabia is considered as an emerging country in terms of PPP Readiness.
He elaborated: “Saudi Arabia needs to address the 5 pillars of PPP programs viz. enabling legal and regulatory framework, capacity of government institutions to incubate PPP projects, operational capability to execute and supervise projects, attractive investment climate and financial facilities.”
“If Saudi Arabia gets these enablers right it can not just fill the gap in its infrastructure spending but potentially raise its spending as percentage of GDP,” he added.
Meanwhile, Anne De Pazzis, head of BOT Activity, EVP, Suez, said: “PPP is thus one of those important options and its use is becoming more widespread in many country.”
She later highlighted their experience in many countries including Saudi Arabia as they have been working with the Saudi National Water Company.
The CEO of “ELM” Company, Dr. Abdul-Rahman Bin Saad Al-Jadhai, pointed out that making use of modern technology for the nation’s development is the ideal way to develop the working environment here in Saudi Arabia.
Partnership between the private and public sectors will go a long way to reach national goals, and in keeping the global changes, the country has to meet new challenges in the field of competitiveness, he added.
From his side, Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop, deputy chairman of Khazanah in Malaysia shared the success story of Malaysia in economic planning. He said: “Malaysia started privatization 33 years ago and we were very concerned to work on it as fast as we could and also to ensure that the program is legally constituted.”
He added: “We made sizable investments in power and desalination plants, airports, roads, schools, water facilities and hospitals, displaying a strong commitment to infrastructure development and creating a number of interesting prospects for private sector participation.”
Joss Dare, global head of transport, Ashurst, agreed with inputs of other panelists that Saudi Arabia should come forward to implement PPP.
“All countries who have adopted this have had to create new primary regulations to roll out PPPs. Public Private Partnership (PPP) between the government and private sector is very important,” he said.
Today Saudi government funds over 80 percent of all infrastructure projects in the economy and only 4 percent of the projects are via PPP.
