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In the area of the award of concession contracts there was a legal vacuum which European Courts tried to solve by clarifying some aspects related to the award of concession contracts in twenty-six pertinent judgements in that area they delivered since year 2000. Nevertheless, the situation in the area of the award of concession contracts was far from satisfactory. That alerted competent institutions of the European Union to the fact that problems connected with the award of concession contracts can not be adequately addressed on a case-by-case basis and that adoption of pertinent EU rules was necessary. Consequently, at the beginning of the year 2014 the Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the award of concession contracts was adopted (hereinafter: Concessions Directive). In this paper we are analysing the main elements of that Directive, such as the precise definition of concession, compulsory publication of concession notices in the Official Journal of the EU in prescribed cases, establishment of certain obligations with respect to the selection and award criteria to be followed by entities awarding concessions, regulation of modifications of concessions during their term, etc. In the paper a critical analysis of the application of the Concessions Directive in the shipping sector is also made, especially in the field of award of contracts for the provision of maritime cabotage services and contracts on providing port services, which are qualified as service concessions and, in that sense, are subject to the application of the Concessions Directive.

The Government of Liberia is in the process of developing a new Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) that is intended to determine its path toward middle-income status. One central aspect of the strategy is likely to be a stronger focus on inclusive growth. This will mean that higher priority will be placed on growing the local private sector, and broadening the base of the economy. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) in infrastructure and services can be a key instrument for achieving these goals especially in an economy like Liberia. The analysis contained in this study identifies the steps toward establishing PPPs as both a policy instrument and method for deepening private sector investment in Liberia. Liberia's rich natural resource endowments have played a fundamental role in the way in which the economy has developed, and in the way in which Government manages private investment in extractive industries. The Government itself has a long history of entering into concession contracts with private investors and operators. Firestone rubber first signed a concession agreement in 1926, and re-signed their concession to last until 2041. More recently, the Government of Liberia has entered into several large natural resource and mining concession contracts that will see large sums of private sector capital invested onshore. This study is one element of a multi-faceted effort to support local private sector and financial sector development in Liberia. It takes into close account the Government's focus on job-creation, the post-conflict dynamics in the country, and Liberia's reliance on extractive industries as a primary source of revenue. The analysis also builds on previous economic sector work that has looked closely at how to stimulate private sector growth and investment, how to support small and medium-size enterprise (SME), and how to leverage existing private sector investment to generate deeper local markets and create new jobs.

Infrastructure plays a key role in fostering growth and productivity and has been linked to improved earnings, health, and education levels for the poor. Yet Latin America and the Caribbean are currently faced with a dangerous combination of relatively low public and private infrastructure investment. Those investment levels must increase, and it can be done. If Latin American and Caribbean governments are to increase infrastructure investment in politically feasible ways, it is critical that they learn from experience and have an accurate idea of future impacts. This book contributes to this aim by producing what is arguably the most comprehensive privatization impact analysis in the region to date, drawing on an extremely comprehensive dataset.

PurposeNotwithstanding the remarkable market potential of the Nigerian economy for private investment, the current sociopolitical characteristics had necessitated a careful assessment to inform decisions in long-term investments. The purpose of this paper is therefore to evaluate the success factors that have a specific influence on private party’s performance in concession contracts in Nigeria.Design/methodology/approachRespondents involved in the study were participants in concession-based contracts in Southwestern Nigeria that included architects, estate surveyors, quantity surveyors, engineers and builders, accountants/bankers/economists and lawyers. These were selected using random and respondent-driven sampling (RDS) approaches. The research instrument adopted was a questionnaire that enlisted questions which were structured to ensure that the respondents have appropriate experience in concession-based projects and hold appropriate positions as decision-makers so as to give credence to collected data. The highest significant factors were identified through the relative significance index (RSI). By exploring factor analysis, the factors were condensed for discussion under appropriate component headings. The value of Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO, 0.755) measure of sampling adequacy tests carried out showed that the data collected were adequate for the factor analysis, and the Bartlett’s test of sphericity (χ2 = 1,799.339; df = 630; p < 0.001) was highly significant.FindingsFactors influencing private party performance clustered under eight components, namely, technical, market maturity, political, legal, finance, procurement, incentive and regulation. However, component items including level of understanding of public–private alliance transactions, stability of exchange rate and provisions for reversion of policies were found to be highly significant. On the other hand, status of domestication and implementation of international laws/codes, predictability in legal regime and enforcement and extent of jurisdictional definition of land usage were least significant.Originality/valueFindings would guide private investors in the preparation of robust investment packages that reduce risks and seemingly unavoidable opportunistic tendencies associated with public–private partnership projects in developing economies.

The Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD) has produced continent-wide analysis of many aspects of Africa's infrastructure challenge. The main findings were synthesized in a flagship report titled Africa's Infrastructure: a time for transformation, published in November 2009. Meant for policy makers, that report necessarily focused on the high-level conclusions. It attracted widespread media coverage feeding directly into discussions at the 2009 African Union Commission Heads of State Summit on Infrastructure. Although the flagship report served a valuable role in highlighting the main findings of the project, it could not do full justice to the richness of the data collected and technical analysis undertaken. There was clearly a need to make this more detailed material available to a wider audience of infrastructure practitioners. Hence the idea of producing four technical monographs, such as this one, to provide detailed results on each of the major infrastructure sectors, information and communication technologies (ICT), power, transport, and water, as companions to the flagship report. These technical volumes are intended as reference books on each of the infrastructure sectors. They cover all aspects of the AICD project relevant to each sector, including sector performance, gaps in financing and efficiency, and estimates of the need for additional spending on investment, operations, and maintenance. Each volume also comes with a detailed data appendix, providing easy access to all the relevant infrastructure indicators at the country level, which is a resource in and of itself.

We construct a regulation model in which renegotiation occurs due to the imperfect enforcement of concession contracts. This enables us to provide theoretical predictions for the impact, on the probability of renegotiation of a concession, of regulatory policy, institutional features, economic shocks and of several characteristics of the concession contracts themselves.

Las asociaciones público-privadas (APP) fueron una respuesta, desde la perspectiva jurídica que buscaban fuentes de financiación de infraestructura en el país, a las necesidades imperantes para el aumento de la competitividad y la conexión entre las ciudades, como medio que facilite el intercambio de personas y mercancías. Debido a los paradigmas que plantean estas formas de contratación que implican un cambio en el modelo tradicional de obra pública, se hizo necesario estudiarlo, respondiendo al objetivo de analizar la naturaleza, elementos e implicaciones que las APP tienen en Colombia en relación con las necesidades nacionales en infraestructura.  Así las cosas, por medio de una investigación cualitativa, descriptiva y analítica, se hicieron análisis de los retos históricos, sociales y económicos en relación con los aspectos jurídicos, por medio de las regulaciones de contratación de obra pública, especialmente de APP en el país, como medio para atender las deudas en infraestructura que enfrenta Colombia.

The objective of this article is to analyse the effect of the type of concession contracts on port user surplus and on profits of terminal operators (or port authorities) with the help of game theory. We have selected three ports in Pakistan to perform this analysis. These ports function as ‘landlords’ and have signed concession contracts with private container terminal operators. However, the features of the contracts at present are different for each terminal. We analyse four cases in this article. The first case is the present situation in which we treat competition between terminals as a Bertrand game in which each terminal non-cooperatively determines charges for container handling and pays fees to port authorities according to the contract. The Bertrand model seems to reproduce, to a satisfactory degree, the market shares and handling fees observed. Furthermore, in the second and third cases, a cost-benefit analysis is conducted by solving the Bertrand model. The results reveal that in the long run it is profitable for the Karachi Port to establish a same fixed fee contract with its private terminals. However, users are better off in a situation where a percentage fee concession contract would be adopted instead. The game theoretic framework is then extended to the analysis of the strategic decision faced by port authorities with respect to the trade-off between unit fees and annual rent in the last case. An optimal concession contract is obtained that is feasible for both parties in the sense that it contains high unit fees (variable cost) and low annual rent (fixed cost).

This report presents the findings of a first-ever, comprehensive study of how Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region airports have evolved during a notable period of transition in airport ownership. It is an unbiased, positive analysis of what happened, rather than a normative analysis of what should be done to reform and to attract private sector participation to the airport sector. It takes the first step to respond to the need for more conclusive information about the influence of airport ownership on economic performance. The report centers on the study of three dimensions of performance: productive efficiency, institutional setup for the governance of the sector, and financing. This multifaceted report uses a range of advanced quantitative and qualitative methods to assess the relationship between airport ownership and performance in the LAC region. After a comprehensive overview, chapters 1 and 2 provide the necessary background for the air transport sector and the evolution of private sector participation and investment in airport infrastructure. In chapter 3, questionnaires submitted to airport operators and regulators led to the creation of the unique data sets, which were first used to compare performance across 14 partial performance indicators, and next used to develop aggregate measures of efficiency necessary for the benchmarking exercise. In chapter 4, a qualitative study of the relationship between type of regulating agency (independent or government-led) and transparency, accountability, and bureaucracy provides insight into how recent reforms have also affected the quality of regulatory governance. Chapter 5 provides an in-depth analysis of the evolution of tariff structures in the region as compared to a sample of international airports. Several important topics were not included in this report but should be the focus of future research. In particular, the evolution of the quality of services in airports deserves greater attention, as airports are increasingly becoming business centers and key gateways for trade competitiveness. The other main topic that requires detailed practical research is climate change and its relationship with the airport sector.

The end of the nineteenth century coincided with the end of concession contracts as a desirable option for French municipalities to organise their water services. An increasing number of disagreements between municipalities and their water concessionaires were brought to administrative courts, while the most difficult cases went to the French Supreme Court, the Conseil d'Etat. All cases dealt with the same issue: the conditions to renegotiate and/or terminate concession contracts. The Compagnie Générale des Eaux, the biggest French water company, lost its biggest concession contracts and had to negotiate new contractual arrangements to survive.