Good recipe from Franch cuisine – Can Serbia implement foreign experience in PPP?

To sum it up, the essence of PPP successis that a businessman should earn and we should profit. Since (there are a fewexceptions) Serbia, at least one of the terms in most of the cases is notcompleted, people mainly only talk about PPP and specific results lack. It isdifficult to distinguish what we lack to get back on the track. However, it isclear that PPP field is still undeveloped and that we still need to learn andwork a lot.

One of the ways to speed up theprocess is to copy a task from those who know more than we do.
A few days ago, the ambassador, François-Xavier Deniau, who announced he expects cooperation with Serbia ininfrastructure and traffic field reminded French companies have significant experiencein concessions .

Experience of Plessis sis Robinson

A group of journalists form Serbia has recently visited Plessis Robinson, nearParis. The idyllic town almost three years ago stepped into the project ofentire utility infrastructure replacement on the basis of the PPP model. They signed a contractwith a consortium, called Plessentiel, which provided reconstruction of roads, pavements,parking, pedestrian zones, different underground conducts, public lightning,etc. This sis the unique model in France and as Philippe Remezec, the mayor, explained, the idea was to make the city looklike a construction site as shorter period of time as possible.

Plesiss Robinson (Photo: Milica Stevuljević)

Theentire project totals EUR 41,5 mil, a and the municipality will, through “rent”(annually EUR 2,64 mil), in twenty yearstime pay off some EUR 52 mil. As themayor says, wheat they would give as a fee to a private partner, they would getanyhow for the maintenance of infrastructure during these years.

Savings are, Remezec says, in "clean money" as well (becauseindebtness would cost local self-governance more), and in quality services.

Plesiss Robinson (Photo: Milica Stevuljević)

The factor of “added costs” is responsible for sometimes bad PPP reputation andopinion this is “an expensive pleasure”, our collocutor says.

- Critiques when it comes to PPP come because they cover huge projects so it happenedthat during the implementation, work gets more expensive. Therefore, at thebeginning, terms which cannot be changes have to be agreed at the beginning. Our municipality spent a lot of time onnegotiation but our contract is clear and has no changes.

How to find a real model?

- We are not claiming that delegated management is the most perfect managerialway nor that one cannot make a mistake here - Pierre Chabane, director of the Institute for PPP Frnace (Insitutut de la gestion deleguee- IGD).

- The advantage is the fact that France has long tradition so there is a large number of PPP models wecan opt for.

How PPP can succeed in the long run? It can do it only if set up based on theprincipal useful for both parties, Chabane says.

How PPP can succeed in the long run?It can do it only if set up based on the principal useful for both parties,Chabane says.

-Negotiations and only negotiation - he claims.

- It is hard to collect all the data since there is no a number of institutionsdealing with PPP. However, I can say that in France really rarely contractterminates first of all because both parties would lose a lot so everybody aretrying to succeed. It happens, but rarely - (Laure Lagasse, in charge of legalissue in IGD, says.

- Of course, it happens the contract expires or a city or municipality decidesnot to resign it for different reasons - Laure Lagasse says.

How to fight corruption, how to control what is agreed and who with? What isthe control mechanism even of the contract itself and of what private ownerlater does?

- There is always control. Contracts on PPP must be sent to the government andthe Ministry of Finance. However, the contract is not directly available toevery citizen partly because some elements are business secret of a certaincompany. Citizens get to their rights through elected authority. Aso, in townswith more than 100.000 people, a kind of a consulting commission beforecontracting PPP is set up and there citizens have their reps - LaureLagasse says.

Apart from that, she points out that the right and obligation of the publicauthority is to keep supervisory role, to monitor on regular basis and reportson contract implementation.

Milica Stevuljevic