Govt.’s PPP boss wants new set of regulations to facilitate investment

By Chandeepa Wettasinghe
The chief of the Finance Ministry’s new National Agency for Public Private Partnerships (NAPPP), which is shrouded in secrecy, wants new rule books written for his agency, and to facilitate delayed investment projects, since the old rule book is too restrictive. NAPPP Chairman Thilan Wijesinghe speaking at a recent forum in Colombo, said that public private partnerships (PPPs) handled by his agency should not be restricted by the ‘Procurement Guidelines 2006’ of the Finance Ministry.

 “We have been buried in a quagmire of what is called the 2006 procurement guidelines for goods and services [sic], which is now being adopted for PPP projects,” Wijesinghe said.

Even buried in this quagmire, too many major procurement scandals costing the country billions of rupees in taxpayer money have occurred in recent years, such as the 2016 coal tender and the purchase of passenger aircraft from Airbus, just to name 
a few.

However, Wijesinghe wants new guidelines for the NAPPP to fast-track the establishment of PPPs, which are driven by investment, instead 
of purchase.

“PPP guidelines do not belong under the Procurement Council, because they are fundamentally different. Whilst we recognize there are delays, we have to issue a new set of PPP guidelines to update the 1998 guidelines that I had the privilege of drafting with the then Deputy Secretary to the Treasury,” 

he said. Meanwhile, Wijesinghe said that the 2006 guidelines should be halted immediately to implement investment projects stuck in the pipeline, if the stakeholders cannot resolve the issues through dialogue.

“We must take an immediate decision to suspend the 2006 guidelines and pass a new set of guidelines involving implementing the projects that are stuck. Some dramatic action is necessary in my view,” he said, noting that state institutions and officials can only be partially blamed for the delays. The last time dramatic action was necessitated under this government—requiring an urgent debt financing requirement of Rs.15 billion for road development—the public lost billions of rupees in returns on their retirement accounts, and this dramatic action has rocked the very foundations of this government with the resignation of a powerful minister.

Many multinational agencies which measure government effectiveness have cited corruption in Sri Lanka as a deterrent for foreign investment, amongst other weaknesses that make doing business difficult