Policy Paper on Public-Private Partnerships for Public Investment Project Management, 2016 – 2020.

This Policy Paper on Public-Private Partnerships for Public Investment Project Management, 2016 – 2020 is cross-sectoral policy document at the national level. The objectives of this Policy Paper are to promote and encourage investments by private sector and financial institutions to contribute to restoring, building, operating and maintaining public infrastructure and other economic productivity enhancement sectors in an innovative and effective manner and in accordance with international standards. This will support long-term sustainable economic growth and increase Cambodia’s competitiveness in the context of regional and global economic integration.
To achieve the above objectives through this Policy Paper, the goals of the Royal Government are to set out strategies, identify institutional mechanism, and establish financial support mechanism for the short-term, medium-term, and long-term timeframes in order to develop an effective, efficient, transparent, accountable, consistent and interlinked system to manage public investment through PPPs.
The Royal Government’s key strategy is to develop and set out policy measures aiming to contribute to establishing a favorable environment to encourage participation from private sector and financial institutions in public investment through PPPs. The Plicy Paper has proposed immediate, medium-term and long-term policy measures. The immediate policy measures include: to establish an Inter-Ministerial Committee led by the Ministry of Economy and Finance with participation from other relevant line ministries/institutions; Establish and operationalize Project Development Facility (PDF) to support specialized ministries/institutions in project development from the initial stage of feasibility study or up to the granting of the concession contract; etc. The medium-term and long-Term policy measures include: 1. Continue to review and revise as needed related legal framework, institutional mechanism, procedures to manage financial support mechanism, and operational management procedures for public investment projects using PPPs; 2. Review possibilities to establish Viability Gap Fund (VGF) in order to provide subsidy to some public investment projects to make them more attractive to private sector and financial institutions; 3. Update institutional capacity and human resource development plan; 4. the Royal Government will update priority project list based on actual economic contexts by reviewing possibilities to include a number of additional priority sectors as follows: Infrastructure for gas and petroleum sector such as petroleum and gas distribution system; - Telecommunications sector and information and communications technology; - Irrigation system and agriculture infrastructure; etc.