Spl initiative to involve private sector under PPP taken

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FE Report
The government has taken a special initiative to involve the private sector under Public Private Partnership (PPP) to accelerate the process of investment.
Presenting the national budget for FY 2009-10, Finance Minister AMA Muhith proposed to allocate Tk 21 billion for creating an 'Infrastructure Investment Fund' to pave the way for implementation of various development projects under the PPP.
"This allocation will be used for setting up an Infrastructure Investment Fund," Mr Muhith told parliament Thursday.
He also proposed to create three new 'expenditure heads' in the FY 2009-10 budget to facilitate new projects under PPP.
"As a vehicle to attain this higher growth, investment in infrastructure development, especially, power and energy, ports, communication, supply of drinking water and waste management, education and health will be given highest priority, a huge investment is required to achieve this target," the finance minister said.
He further said in addition to the existing public and private investment programmes, an investment of US$ 28 billion will be required by FY 2013-14 to achieve the projected growth as per the preliminary estimates.
"The government alone cannot provide such huge amount of resources. It would be difficult to maintain macroeconomic stability if the government has to finance such huge investment by borrowing from domestic sources," he told parliament.
Again, it will not be possible to obtain such funds as concessionary loans from the development partners
He further said since the process is lengthy for implementation and mobilisation of fund for infrastructure development projects, the investment risk is much higher and at the same time, the investment is not, in many cases, commercially viable.
"In this context we are going to take special initiatives to involve the private sector under Public Private Partnership (PPP) to meet the probable investment gap in infrastructure development and maintenance, alongside the government's investment," he said.