Public Private Partnership Authority (P3A) has been established by the federal government in order to facilitate and assist the federal implementation agencies in developing , structuring and procuring their infrastructure projects on Public Private Partnership modalities and to regulate the federal PPP transactions.
Official sources concerned on being contacted said that through P3A (Amendment) Act, 2021., the P3A introduced establishment of Public Private Partnership Working Party (the P3AP) and Risk Management Unit. Two dedicated funds, Viability Gap Fund (VGF) and Project Development Facility will facilitate the implementing agencies for grant of VGF and funding support for preparing commercially viable and bankable feasibility studies.
The project preparation, appraisal, procurement and approvals have also been systematized by introducing the concepts of (a) Project Concept Proposal, (b) Project Qualification Proposal and (c) Project Proposal. The P3A Amendment Act has mandated the P3AWP to assess, consider and approve the PCP and PQP. The Project requires approval of P3A Board.
P3A Act 2017 also provides for receipt of fee from the successful private party at the time of financial close. The total accumulative fee that has been accrued to P3A comes to Rs 871 million which will be paid by the private party after the financial close. This provision has been incorporated in all bidding documents including the P3 Agreements, the sources said.
P3A is actively pursuing to engage the federal and provincial state-owned entities, to provide them the financial and legal services for their infrastructure projects for a fee.
The benefit of such an endeavor would be two-fold: first being the implementing agencies would be developing P3 projects under the direct advisory supervision of P3A and secondly, P3A would be building capacity of the implementing agencies starting from initial screening, appraisal, preparation, procurement up to the implementation of a project. On this account, P3A is engaged with the Province of Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan to help, advise and capacitate them for undertaking their various initiatives under P3 modality, the sources added.
