• Public-Private partnerships

Public-Private partnerships

Since the 1990s, African countries have adopted public-private partnerships (PPPs) to mobilize private sector resources for public projects. According to the World Bank, the private sector contributed $969 billion to public infrastructure financing from 1990 to 2005. This article examines the progress of Public-Private Partnerships in Senegal with regard to legal, institutional and regulatory settings, and demonstrates how decentralization could help promote PPP and boost local infrastructure development.

The paper notes that Senegal has attracted $905 million in private sector investment in PPPs mainly in three successful initiatives in urban water supply, independent power production and railroads. The success of these three initiatives has helped in creating CET law (Construction-Exploitation-Transfert) to set up an appropriate environment for private sector involvement in public infrastructure development.
 
The author argues that enacting the CET Law is a major step towards a legal, institutional and regulatory framework for PPP transactions. However, CET law still lacks the coherence with existing laws and the reliability expected by private investors and populations. One of the major challenges facing the development of PPPs in Senegal is public perception. The majority of the public perceives that the CET Law was enacted to provide private resources for infrastructure investments (mostly roads and water) only in the capital city of Dakar. This perception calls for an information campaign to raise the populations' awareness and understanding regarding PPP benefits and impact on the sub-national governments' ability to mobilize resources for local economic development, employment creation and ultimately the population's well being.

Notwithstanding the little progress made in improving the legal, institutional and regulatory environment for PPPs, the paper finds that some sub-national governments have successfully developed small scale PPPs. To that end these local governments made use of the political and administrative powers granted to them by the decentralization law. In order to have the sub-national governments take even more advantage of the CET law and better involve the private sector in local public project development, the paper recommends following actions:

• Define a vision and develop strategies to promote PPPs as a local economic development tool under Senegal's decentralized public administration;
• Provide greater fiscal authority to sub-national governments and seek support from donors such as USAID and the World Bank to develop effective and bankable small scale PPPs;
• Create a study fund to support local governments in undertaking feasibility studies and maintaining a data bank of PPP project initiatives;
• Create a fully operational and staffed PPP support unit at the central government level to further assist local governments in developing bankable PPP projects,

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