Public-Private Partnerships: Did a Potentially Useful Concept Sink in the “Muddle of Ideas"?

Budget cuts, budgets deficits, budget overruns, and limited budgets constitute the reality of today’s public sector. This is not only a problem of scarce resources for new investments but the public sector is also struggling with maintaining assets and services at current levels. Therefore, public managers try to look at alternative solutions which may provide answers to present problems. Public-Private Partnerships seem to offer a good solution to budget deficits and inefficient operations. The framework introduces private sector resources and/or expertise as a partner in order to help, provide, and deliver public sector assets and services. It bonds private and public sector for the period of 20-30 years. Some say it is an excellent idea as it enables investments which otherwise would be never procured and it does not strain the budget. Others oppose it and say someday the bill will have to be paid off, and it will turn out to be much more expensive than a traditional procurement. Moreover, they say, it is a waste of taxpayers’ money as PPPs don’t bring efficiencies and are done in favor of private partner. The dispute grows and along with that the concept sinks in the muddle of ideas which often are false statements. Therefore, there is a need to talk more about the PPP arrangements and try to draw the true picture of it, in order to help public manager obtain comprehensive knowledge which will facilitate decision whether PPP should be conducted or not. The author of this paper looked at the dispute, tried to refresh the concept of PPP, and give an objective evaluation of it. It turned out to that it is hard to give one precise answer whether PPPs are worthy of public attention. However, there are some useful suggestions which can be drawn from the jumbled discussion.