EIB promotes PPPs across Mediterranean

The European Investment Bank (EIB) launched a technical assistance programme last week to help promote public-private partnerships (PPPs) across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories, Syria and Lebanon, the bank said in a statement.
 
The initiative is being developed through FEMIP, the EIB’s financial arm dedicated to fomenting development in the nine Mediterranean countries, and hopes “to mobilise the private sector” to help fund over €300 billion of infrastructure investments by 2030.
 
FEMIP’s three-year technical assistance programme will run from 2011 to 2013 and will take a three-pronged approach to encouraging PPPs. It will start by publishing a study at the end of May offering a regional analysis of the use of PPPs across the Mediterranean, including its principle obstacles and recommendations to improve the enabling environment.
 
Following that, FEMIP will issue operational recommendations for each of the nine countries and assist with the implementation of PPP policies for chosen priority sectors. Finally, the programme will help develop “a number of pilot projects involving priority investment operations under the national or sectoral PPP policies identified in the previous phase”.
 
A number of regional conferences and workshops will also be held throughout this year and next involving members of the public and private sector to help define PPP priorities across the nine countries. FEMIP has been operating since late 2002 and has more than €12 billion available to support investment in the Mediterranean countries.