Abstract:
With the ever-growing demand for public infrastructure and services, along with political
dysfunction, challenging fiscal environment, greater project complexity, and less potency in
improving its services, the government couldn‟t execute its role well and public failure would
happen. Similarly, on the part of the private sector, market failure, naturally begets challenging
problems hindering investment and dwindling their profit the same. For the need to rectify these
public and market failures from both sides, both government and private sector has undergone
discoveries and come up with an innovative solution, bringing an alternative public
infrastructure investment and public service delivery to the government; and a new business
venture to the private sector. This modality is called, “Public-Private Partnerships”; PPPs in
short. Although it has multifaceted benefits, PPP is not a panacea. Due to the complex nature of
infrastructure projects, the involvement of various stakeholders, and the requirement of long term commitments, PPPs are sophisticated. PPP projects pass through robust economic
analysis, complex negotiations, intense public scrutiny, long-term commitment, skillful design of
frameworks, etc. For this, designing dedicated frameworks is indispensable. For this, Ethiopia
has formulated dedicated PPP frameworks. However, among other things, the frameworks suffer
from a lack of inclusive participation of stakeholders and engagement since the policy process;
lack of public disclosure requirements; over-inclination to economic infrastructures and mega
projects; narrow space for sustainable development, human rights, and pro-poor growth;
unbounded government support clauses; inadequate force majeure, renegotiation risk allocation
clauses, and; overlapping roles and responsibilities, and lack of line of responsibility with
sectoral PPP Units with the PPP Board and PPPDG are identified as shortcomings and this
study recommends revision of frameworks with particulars indicated in this report