Pics taken during the 2nd BEDB Stakeholder Forum which took place at the Empire Hotel’s Bunker Club. The theme for the forum this year is “Developing Infrastructure Building Partnerships”. The focus was clearly on Public-Private Partnerships.
The term “public-private partnership” is a specific reference to a deal between a government and a collection of private companies to construct public infrastructure.
In these deals, the government is able to transfer risks for the project from itself to the private sector provider, meaning any cost overruns are not passed on to the government.
The deals take on a number of structures, but at the basic level usually involve a private consortium that designs, finances and builds a large-scale project, such as a bridge, road or hospital.
The private sector provider may also have a deal to maintain the road after it’s done, or provide support services such as some cleaning at a hospital.
These contracts generally last for about 30 years.
View from the Bunker early in the morning…
YB Minister of Development gave an invigorating “soliloquy”.
CEO of BEDB stimulating the thoughts of the participants
YB giving his two cents
BEDB Babes
Coffee or Tea?
Deep discussions
Some interesting notes I made 😉
Presenting the group’s findings
Dato Timothy summing up brilliantly as usual
Excellent write up, nice shots as always Reedz:-)
If I may … what do you think about adding to the list of large scale projects –> Services, Health, Education and e-Government projects?
The transfer of risks can also be mutually beneficial for the Public, the Government and the Industry. E.g. “outsourcing” the whole of a particular workflow from the Brunei Government to a Contractor.
Take your pick from current workflows –> road tax renewals, issuing of new national registration identity cards, secondary school education.
An illustration: corporatise all providers of service XYZ. Put a cap on .gov.bn spending on service XYZ per capita. Devise a system to distribute XYZ per capita in an efficient manner to the new corporatised XYZ service providers, proportionate to the value that those providers bring to their communities.
Public –> uses services provided by commercial entities. Customer is #1 after all.
Government –> takes a policy-making and high level view, ensures that certain key measurable targets are met while stimulating the growth of Brunei’s industry. e.g. service XYZ must achieve x% improvement year on year, Annual expenditure per capita must reduce x% faster than inflation (RPI-X formula), etc.
Industry –> participates in the risk and opportunity sharing with the Government. Some of these business models may benefit from economies of scale. By finding the right scale, the Industry then has the opportunity to pass on cost & efficiency savings back to the Public and the Government. Some providers may maximise benefits to society through specialisation, some through cost reduction, some through providing value-added services. Let the market decide, IMHO, by developing an ecosystem that permits such innovation.
And create an eventual exit strategy for those body corporates to be privatised in the long run.
What can I say? I have outsourcing on the brain. Those are my 2 cents 😀
Izam.
Thank you very much indeed for your valuable comment dude! I absolutely agree with you. Much of what you wrote was very eloquently laid out by YB Minister of Development in his keynote address. The critical piece of the puzzle however still remains unaddressed, and that is, for PPPs to be successful, the government MUST look at assets on an accrual basis, where assets must be properly charged, not just treated as sunken cost.
Get 5 multinationals to make Brunei their HQ/competency centres/r&d…..Apple ‘green’ centre in Brunei! (backdrop to the eye of Borneo), Shell’s Global upstream competency centre in Seria, MS/Oracle’s Islamic Solutions R&D Centre, Global Islamic Economy Formulation centre (following Davos resolution to explore alternatives)…..just brain dumping.
Reality is…
population in very small…more people in Kuching than whole of Brunei
skills and expertise not there yet….current profile need major realignment
local unis production not align to industry/skills needs
etc, BUT
can be overcome and there are alternatives.
gtg. enough to get discussion going, i hope.