FINANCE Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh, has called on international finance corporations (IFCs) — the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) — to aid Guyana in establishing good public/private partnership (PPP) transactions.

Recognising the role to be played by regional and international development partners in helping to identify good opportunities for public/private partnership, Dr. Singh issued the call on Wednesday during a public/private partnership seminar initiated in lieu of the 44th Annual Meeting of the CDB’s Board of Governors.

The minister noted the extreme importance of the PPP model for use in financing the huge infrastructure gap that persists in the Region, and during his earlier address to the opening ceremony, he asserted that in “recognising the severity of the fiscal constraint facing us in the Region, and acknowledging that it would be impossible for the required investments for transformation to be made within the confines of public sector fiscal and debt sustainability, it is absolutely critical that the Bank pays greater attention to private sector financing.”

Dr. Singh observed that multilateral and regional institutions regard themselves more in the capacity of guardians and protectors from ill-fated PPP projects than the promoters and facilitators of good PPP projects.

He added that the major impediments for the Region are the ability to identify good opportunities for PPPs; structuring good transactions; and bringing credible investors to those transactions, while ensuring that such transactions are brought to conclusion with successful implementation.

He also noted that there is a fair distance to be travelled by the region in assuming the first leap in advancing towards some PPP investments.

Minister Singh said he had seen many presentations and papers that cautioned on the risks, which are all too familiar; however, he said it would be essential for good transactions to be published along with feasibility studies, so that credible investors could be brought to the table in order for negotiations to be confirmed and concluded.

The minister said what obtains in the Caribbean is the general perception of many that airports, roads and bridges are public sector investments, while regrettably, the region is not quite at the point where there is conclusive consensus that an airport is a ripe opportunity for PPP.

“I believe there is a very important role to be played given the lack of experience in the Region in implementing PPPs with the recognition of the urgency and legitimacy of the instrument as a solution,” Dr. Singh said.

The Finance Minister said the Region does not have too many options if it continues to hold to the reality of limited alternatives to private capital. As such, this results in the existence of a considerably wide infrastructure gap at the same time when the country is faced with very severe fiscal circumstances.

“The dilemma for us is that in each of our respective countries we have — largely because of scale — fairly limited institutional capacity to implement good PPPs on a large scale,” Dr. Singh said.

He related that, in similar circumstances as Jamaica, Guyana is fortunate that there exists some amount of capacity, but this is not to shy away from the reality that the nation could not pretend to possess the level of capacity that would be needed to implement all the PPPs.

He concluded that there in an important role to be played by the identified institutions in public/private partnerships.