The Mul­ti­lat­er­al In­vest­ment Fund (MIF), a mem­ber of the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank Group, will sup­port the Gov­ern­ment of T&T to pi­lot the use of Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ships in the health and ed­u­ca­tion sec­tors. This pro­gramme en­vi­sions de­vel­op­ment and de­liv­ery of ten ear­ly child­hood ed­u­ca­tion and pri­ma­ry schools and three imag­ing and lab­o­ra­to­ry di­ag­nos­tic cen­tres.

Build­ing on pri­or co-op­er­a­tion, these projects will pro­vide the gov­ern­ment with the prac­ti­cal knowl­edge and process­es need­ed to de­vel­op suc­cess­ful PPPs, and equip the gov­ern­ment with the ex­pe­ri­ence nec­es­sary to im­ple­ment the PPP mod­el for a wide range of projects in the fu­ture. The in­ter­ven­tion is based on MIF best prac­tices and draws on ef­fec­tive strate­gies for "learn­ing by do­ing" and man­ag­ing risks as­so­ci­at­ed with the adop­tion of new mech­a­nisms to de­liv­er in­fra­struc­ture.

The de­vel­op­ment of these pi­lot projects will re­ceive con­tin­ued tech­ni­cal ad­vice and fi­nan­cial sup­port from the MIF as part of its pro­gramme, Pro­mot­ing Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ships for In­fra­struc­ture in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

This PPP ini­tia­tive will be fund­ed as fol­lows: a tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion of US$864,000 from the MIF to de­vel­op in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty, an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment and gov­er­nance struc­ture to de­liv­er in­fra­struc­ture and re­lat­ed ser­vices through PPPs; fi­nan­cial sup­port to­tal­ing US$500,000 from Com­pete Caribbean; and an ad­di­tion­al US$450,000 in re­sources from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank.

The Min­istries of Health and Ed­u­ca­tion have formed PPP ex­e­cu­tion teams to as­sess, de­sign and struc­ture the projects while the PPP Unit in the Min­istry of Fi­nance and Econ­o­my will pro­vide tech­ni­cal sup­port, over­sight and man­age the over­all process. MIF and Com­pete Caribbean fi­nanc­ing will sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of the busi­ness case for each of the pi­lots to en­sure that the pro­posed projects are eco­nom­i­cal­ly, fi­nan­cial­ly and so­cial­ly jus­ti­fied as the best val­ue for mon­ey com­pared to tra­di­tion­al pro­cure­ment modal­i­ties.

The sec­ond stage of the PPP project de­vel­op­ment will in­volve struc­tur­ing the pi­lot trans­ac­tions and ini­ti­a­tion of a com­pet­i­tive bid­ding process to se­lect qual­i­fied and ex­pe­ri­ence pri­vate sec­tor providers. Fund­ing from the IDB and MIF as well as the Gov­ern­ment will sup­port tech­ni­cal ad­vi­sors at this stage

The MIF has been sup­port­ing PPPs in T&T since 2010. With sup­port from the MIF, the Gov­ern­ment has es­tab­lished a PPP Unit, adopt­ed a PPP pol­i­cy and gov­er­nance struc­ture, iden­ti­fied projects, and in­vest­ed in ini­tial ca­pac­i­ty build­ing.

It will pro­vide con­tin­ued sup­port PPP ca­pac­i­ty build­ing with­in the Gov­ern­ment through fi­nanc­ing an ex­pert ad­vi­sor to men­tor and ad­vise the PPP Unit and pi­lot ex­e­cu­tion teams, ap­plied in-coun­try PPP train­ing for the ex­e­cu­tion teams for and dur­ing all stages of the PPP process, and foun­da­tion train­ing in the ba­sic prin­ci­ples and con­cepts of PPPs.

This ini­tia­tive seeks to demon­strate the ap­pli­ca­tion of PPPs as an al­ter­na­tive de­vel­op­ment mod­el to close in­fra­struc­ture gaps in small­er economies, no­tably in the Caribbean re­gion. Lessons learned dur­ing the first phase of the project will be high­light­ed at a knowl­edge ex­change fo­rum be­ing or­ga­nized by the MIF and the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank in No­vem­ber to ex­am­ine the use of PPPs to ad­dress in­fra­struc­ture chal­lenges posed by cli­mate change, an area of par­tic­u­lar im­por­tance to Caribbean states

This pro­gramme of sup­port is an ex­am­ple of cross-col­lab­o­ra­tion across sec­tors and di­vi­sions of the IDB as well as syn­er­gies with Cana­da's CI­DA and the UK's DFID de­vel­op­ment agen­cies through Com­pete Caribbean to pro­vide tech­ni­cal sup­port, knowl­edge and fi­nan­cial re­sources re­quired to ad­dress the com­plex de­vel­op­ment chal­lenges of small mem­ber states, a pri­or­i­ty of the IDB.

The ef­forts were cat­alyzed by IDB re­search on the fea­si­bil­i­ty of PPPs for Caribbean states in 2008 and 2009, as well as ear­ly in­vest­ment by the MIF to mo­bi­lize ef­forts to ap­ply this modal­i­ty in T&T.

The MIF sup­ports pri­vate sec­tor-led de­vel­op­ment ben­e­fit­ting low-in­come pop­u­la­tions and the poor–their busi­ness­es, their farms, and their house­holds. As an ex­pe­ri­enced ac­tor and part­ner with prac­ti­cal knowl­edge on a lo­cal lev­el, the MIF has or­ga­nized pro­grammes through­out the re­gion to im­prove reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works, and to in­crease the ca­pac­i­ty of gov­ern­ments to de­vel­op and im­ple­ment PPPs for in­fra­struc­ture and ba­sic ser­vices.

Since 2004, the MIF has lever­aged $20 mil­lion in 19 tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion projects, serv­ing as a cat­a­lyst for an ad­di­tion­al $671 mil­lion in pri­vate in­vest­ment and more than $4 bil­lion in an­tic­i­pat­ed fu­ture in­vest­ments through PPPs.