Critical Risk Factors of PPP Infrastructure Projects in India: A Practitioner's View

Abstract

India has been adopting the Public Private Partnership mode of Infrastructure developments more aggressively since the last decade of 20th century. From Gujrat to Arunachal, Kashmir to Kanyakumari respective governments have tried to rope into private partnership for developing Infrastructures of their specified need and thereby facilitating private source of funding. However, infrastructure asset creation through private funding has been a mixed kind of experience so far in India. The bottle necks in Infrastructure development through PPP, thus needs to be reviewed critically so as to look forward for a realistic win-win model. This is more so important as because most of the PPP projects awarded during an aggressive push period of PPP in the 1st decade of 21st century have entered into their second most vulnerable phase of O&M. In this study, primarily it was intended to identify critical risk issues and about the perceptions of respondents on some related aspects.  Six hypotheses have been postulated to achieve the goal of the study. All Indian surveys in three stages among the different stakeholders i.e. promoter, government, consultant, lenders and other categories have been carried out during the period between2009-2013. The total targeted respondent from all categories was 89. The survey responses were statistically analyzed for quantifying the results for qualitative analysis.  A detailed case study analysis of 30 infrastructure projects was also carried out and survey findings have been validated through case study comparison.  Twelve (12) most critical issues were identified. Ten (10) most critical factors were identified and ten (10) very critical factors were identified. Perceptions relating to some of the important aspects have also been highlighted. ANOVA test of Second Stage of survey responses showed that all the six hypotheses of the study stands as the respondents had concurred without any significance.  Overall, it is revealed that PPP in India is still a most sought after viable alternative for Infrastructure asset creation.