Self-Assessment Tool for PPP Readiness in a Country

In partnership with several member countries, the ESCAP Secretariat has developed a self-assessment tool for PPP readiness, in course of its current PPP capacity building programme financed by the UNDA.

The aim of this PPP-Readiness Self-Assessment is to provide a diagnostic tool for identifying the key areas that governments need to address in order to involve the private sector more actively in the infrastructure development process.

The key function of the Assessment is that it is to be used to diagnose problems in attracting private investment for infrastructure development as distinct from using it to develop benchmarks against which different sectors or countries could be compared.

The intention of the Assessment is that it is a questionnaire in which all the questions could be answered by small informed groups that have understanding of the investment environment in a country in half a day. Ideally, the groups should comprise of stakeholders with common interests. For example, a public sector group and a private sector group. Having filled out the questionnaire, the groups can discuss the commonality and difference in their perceptions of the PPP environment. Based on their assessment, action plans can be prepared afterwards. The whole assessment process is summarized in the diagram below.

Guidelines (PDF, 55 pages) assist in using the tool. It also includes a copy of all the questions. The tool was developed in Excel format for easy use. It comes in two forms:

• Manual input (.xls)
• Individual files: Government (.xls), Domestic private sector (.xls), International private sector (.xls); and linked input from individual files (.xls)

The questionnaire is separated into two parts:

Part A focuses on issues relating to the general investment climate in country. The areas of focus include:

• Macroeconomic environment
• Business climate
• Financial environment
• Legal and governance environment

Part B focuses on questions specifically related to PPPs and are qualitative in nature. The areas to which these question focus include:

• Legal and regulatory provision
• Policy framework
• Capacity
• Project selection and contracting process
• Post-selection process
• Social dimension

In filling out the questionnaires, respondents or groups are asked to rate the country’s performance against each of the 98 questions on a scale of 0-4 with 4 being the highest score.