PPP Training for Province Authorities in Argentina

Long-term development projects with a high impact on improving quality of life are a priority promoted by CAF on a permanent basis through funding, technical assistance and knowledge generation. The international workshop “PPPs: Tools for Provincial Governments,” organized by CAF, is a training event for officials in sub-national administrations to learn fundamentals of Private Public Partnership (PPP) contracts and analyze case studies in Latin America.

“Our role as a development bank prompts us to think about the long term, and that is why we have decided to boost support to countries and provinces in the PPP project development. It is important to think about the future, and at CAF we want to commit to this funding mechanism in order to promote large-scale projects that otherwise could not be performed with public funds alone or only with private stakeholders,” said Santiago Rojas, CAF representative in Argentina.

Furthermore, Mónica López, coordinator of the PPP Program of the Vice-Presidency of Infrastructure at CAF, presented the PPP Guide for Regional and Local Governments, and outlined the main definitions and stakeholders involved in the projects, as well as fundamentals and case studies in Latin America.

Public sector representatives included Hugo Torres, national director of Legal and Regulatory Analysis of Private Public Partnership Projects of the Cabinet of Ministers of Argentina, who reviewed PPP contract models, public projects and concessions and emphasized the need to consider the long term: “While contract rules need to have a great deal of foresight, we must take into account, especially in countries with instabilities, that these contracts are incomplete, and will inevitably be renegotiated over time.”

In addition, Miquel Rodríguez, co-author of the PPP Guide and manager of PPP for Cities, analyzed the different stages of a PPP and project structuring. “At the end of this workshop, any public manager should be clear about what a PPP is, what kind of actions they should be used for, whether they should be used at all, and if yes, take into account the fundamentals, what the added value of PPPs is, the stages and what we need to think about the environment.” In a review of the benefits for the people, Rodríguez described the cases of the Rio de Janeiro Light Rail, and the cable car in Kuelap, Peru. Referring to the latter, he said: “Thanks to this innovative project, there were benefits for tourism and for the economic development of a remote region.”

Jordi Salvador, co-author of the PPP Guide and researcher of PPP for Cities, presented the CAF-led project developed for the El Realito Aqueduct in Mexico for wastewater treatment, an example of added value: “It is important for projects to add value, provide economic, social, environmental benefits for different stakeholders—businesses, government and society—and we must ensure that they are projects that help attain sustainable development goals with a particular impact on the most neglected social strata.” He also reviewed the importance of “risk transfer between both parties, the public and the private sectors.”

CAF has taken on the challenge of training decision-makers to minimize the difficulties that arise during PPP contracts in their various stages, from planning to awarding, where the public and private sectors must have specific knowledge and shared responsibilities and risks, in order to implement meaningful, sustainable projects that improve the quality of life of Latin Americans.