Project Financing Model Research Articles

Public private partnerships: Incentives, risk transfer and real options

Private financing of large-scale infrastructure projects through public private partnerships (PPPs) has grown in recent decades. Together with changes in conventional construction procedures, there have been changes in the project financing model. The use of PPPs raises questions as to the role of the private sector in infrastructure provision and the conditions governing the long-term contractual relationships between the private and public sectors. In some early examples of PPPs, the government guaranteed a minimum profitability over the cash flows using a set of contractual terms which transferred some of the risk of the project from the private provider back to the government. Using a large toll road project, the Melbourne CityLink Project, as a case study we show how the imposed conditions can be treated as real options, how these options affect the incentive to invest and how the public sector may be transferring considerable value to the private sector through government guarantees.

The Evolving Role of the Private Sector in the U.S. Toll Road Market

Since the mid 19th century, the construction, financing, operation, and maintenance of toll roads in the United States has been the near-exclusive domain of government entities such as state departments of transportation and public toll road authorities. Beginning in the late 1980s, the private sector has been encouraged to play a more significant role by a variety of factors including changes in federal rules governing design and construction of highways, state legislative initiatives designed to foster innovative procurement and financing, the emergence of design/build as an accepted procurement strategy, and the development of international toll road concession practices. The evolution of the private sector9s role has led to a similar evolution in the way toll roads are financed, away from a purely public finance basis and toward a project financing model. The most significant obstacle to private sector involvement in the United States continues to be the tax-exempt financing rules that require government ownership and use of these facilities. The U.S. is likely to continue to see gradually increasing allocation of risk and responsibility to private-sector participants, but a broad European-style “privatization” of U.S. toll facilities is unlikely to take place absent fundamental change in the tax-exempt debt rules.

Análise do processo decisório para seleção de rodovias a serem pedagiadas no Brasil

O presente artigo procura apresentar o processo de decisão para seleção das rodovias integrantes da malha viária brasileira, que estão sendo submetidas ao regime de concessão à iniciativa privada, por meio de sua exploração pela cobrança de pedágio. A análise do processo mostra que o instrumento básico para seleção dos trechos considerados viáveis tem sido a avaliação dos empreendimentos sob o enfoque de project financing, cujo indicador de viabilidade é o grau de cobertura do serviço da dívida a ser contraída para realização dos investimentos programados. Na medida em que o project financing é um instrumento parcial de indicação de viabilidade e prioridade econômica, o artigo, no final, propõe um modelo mais abrangente para as tomadas futuras de decisão, em especial porque o programa nacional de concessões de rodovias está ainda em boa parte por se realizar.