Stakeholder perceptions in the factors constraining the development and implementation of public private partnerships in the Ugandan electricity sector

Abstract

Amidst increasingly constrained public budgets and inadequate service delivery, private sector participation through public private partnerships is increasingly being used as a means for delivering physical infrastructure. The government of Uganda, which is currently grappling with a crippling electricity power deficit, has over the years, pursued a number of strategies to encourage private sector participation in the electricity sector, but with limited success. This paper presents the findings of research into the relative importance as perceived by sector stakeholders, of factors that hamstring private sector participation in the development of hydropower generation facilities through public private partnerships in Uganda. The stakeholders considered in this paper are those representing the government and private sector entities in the development of the partnerships. A review of literature and project documents enabled the identification of relevant factors. Data was collected from the respondents by means of a self administered structured questionnaire and quantitative methods used for data analysis. Key findings from the research indicate that the respondents regarded the regulatory and legal frameworks as being attractive for private sector participation and this business environment is further enhanced by their confidence in the government’s commitment to honour its contractual obligations. In contrast, difficulties in structuring and obtaining finance together with issues over the cumbersome approval process and resistance from environmental groups were identified as the most significant constraints to the development and implementation of public private partnerships in the Ugandan electricity sector. Recognizing the importance of an adequate and reliable supply of power in Uganda, as in so many other sub-Saharan countries, it is anticipated that the identification of the relative importance of the constraints as perceived by stakeholders, will inform the process of developing measures and strategies to mitigate the constraints thus facilitating the speedy implementation and deal closure of public private partnership initiatives with the ensuing benefits.

Open Innovation and Innovation Intermediaries in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…Issues, such as corruption (documented by Lilley [74][75][76]), long administrative processes (documented by Ranjit and Kazim [77]), and political interference (as highlighted by Sader [78]) are also frequently mentioned in innovation studies in sub-Saharan Africa. This poor institutional setting and the inability of local institutions to provide a healthy environment to enable tools, such as PPPs, in RI to be implemented are commonly identified as factors that constrain private participation in the sub-Saharan Africa context [79,80]. Our research found that even when there are policies and programs promoting the interconnectivity of STI across national sectors, the level of coherence between them is relatively weak.…”

Evolutionary Game Analysis of the Supervision Behavior for Public-Private Partnership Projects with Public Participation

“…In recent years, the public-private partnership (PPP) is widely used in power supply [1], water supply [2], sewage and garbage disposal [3,4], traffic [5,6], pipes [7], and other public infrastructure construction fields and has become the main way of governments to provide public service [8,9]. Public-private partnership refers to a cooperative relationship formed between government and private organizations, in order to build infrastructure projects or provide some public goods and services [10].…”

Examining influenced factors of the preparation phase on total construction time delay of build-operate-transfer transport projects in Vietnam

“…Fourth, results of multilayer perceptron model showed that the top three most influenced factors on total construction time delay are number of investors, experiences of management unit and number of provinces. With two out of top three factors are related to number of stakeholders, it is suggested that there is probably an issue of interest conflict among stakeholders [31] or a lack of a good coordination between stakeholders [18,32]. As such, future projects should focus on the problem of interest conflict as well as the coordination between stakeholders.…”

“…Another research effort of Babatunde and others [15] has pointed out ten group factors considered as barriers to PPP projects in Nigeria context. Among those, a problem caused by delays has been revealed including receiving payments [16], negotiations, lengthy bureaucratic procedures or political debates [17,18].…”