Strengthening Public Private Partnership Program

1. To support the Philippines Government’s development objectives of inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction, the proposed program aims to boost private sector participation and investment in infrastructure. Specifically, it seeks to improve the government’s capacity to prepare, package and manage PPP projects with the following key component activities: Component 1: Technical assistance to improve the government’s PPP systems and capacity ($1 Million) (a) Strengthening the enabling framework for PPP. Aims to help address critical gaps in existing policy, legal, regulatory, and institutional arrangements building on past studies and technical outputs to enhance the government’s capacity to competitively tender PPP projects. (b) Strengthening capacity of the PPP Centre attached to NEDA. Seeks to strengthen the Centre’s technical capacity to improve its policy advocacy, project development, marketing and monitoring of infrastructure projects through learning-by-doing activities, participation in actual PPP transactions and twinning partnerships with best-practice international institutions. (c) Institutionalising PPP best practices. Intends to build and strengthen key oversight and line agencies core business processes and staff capacity in priority PPP aspects such as project appraisal, risk assessment, tender and contract negotiations as well as monitoring and management of project implementation. (d) Establishing long-term financing and risk guarantee mechanisms. Aims to support the development of regulatory and institutional frameworks for an infrastructure investment financing facility and a credible risk guarantee mechanism to minimise the level of uncertainty of the private sector for PPP investment. Component B. Matching grants for the preparation, competitive bidding, negotiation, and monitoring of PPP projects ($6 million) (e) Co-financing of PPP Centre’s Project Development and Monitoring Facility (PDMF) to prepare bankable PPP proje