The Tribune

By Annelia Nixon

Tribune Business Reporter

anixon@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas’ is failing to obtain “a passing grade” by bringing just 35 percent of proposed public-private partnership (PPP) projects through to fruition, an Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) executive warned yesterday.

Christopher Sinckler, strategic advisor to the IDB’s Caribbean country department, told the Bahamas Institute of Chartered Accountants (BICA) accountants’ week conference that the region and The Bahamas are receiving a “failing grade” over their success in taking projects from the concept stage to the point where they are investable and bankable.

“Our rate of penetration is 21 percent and that would be considered a failing grade,” Mr Sinckler said. “In fact, if we look at the statistics per country in the PPP space... On public private partnerships alone, the Caribbean, with the exception of Jamaica, which is at a 53.5 percent success rate of penetration, all of our Caribbean countries that are covered by the IDB have fallen significantly behind.

“And for The Bahamas, the rate is 35 percent, which is not bad. But it's still not a passing grade. If you look at Barbados... it is 6.8 percent. Trinidad and Tobago is only 14 percent. So at that rate, we will not be able to get even anywhere close to where we need to get, particularly when we think about growing in private sector support.”

Mr Sinckler said the IDB has created the project preparation co-ordination mechanism (PPCM) to help countries and stakeholders in both the private and public sectors better prepare, and structure projects so they can build a pipeline of bankable, investable developments to help grow the Caribbean.

“It is, however, a mechanism to co-ordinate and augment IDB resources internally, and to match those through an IDB approach - that is bringing all of our core key technical experts, co-ordinating them through a technical advisory committee, and putting those talents at the service of our countries, of private sector, of stakeholders, wherever they may be found, national and regional,” Mr Sinckler said.

“And then to build a relationship with external providers of the highest possible quality. And that is important. And why it is important? It's important to you as an association, because in addition to utilising internal IDB expertise, the PPCM has been designed to tap into external expertise.

“That is the lawyers, the accountants, the engineers, the architects, the environmental specialists, wherever they are to be found in the Caribbean or in the wide world. But, of course, as a Caribbean institution, we want to ensure that we tap first into the talents that we have.”

The Bahamas, Barbados, Trinidad, Jamaica, Suriname, and Guyana will require a combined minimum of $21.5bn between now and 2030 to meet the infrastructure component of the United Nations (UN) sustainable development goals (SDGs), according to Mr Sinckler.

“So if only in infrastructure - that is the roads and bridges and, of course, water sanitation and so forth and so on,” Mr Sinckler said. “If only in that space we require $21.5bn between now and 2030, I don't have to tell you what the prohibitive cost would be to include social infrastructure, to go into digitisation, digitising our economies, to go into health and education and social welfare, provisioning and so forth and so on. It is a massive total. And so far, our countries, in their pledges, have pledged through to the SDGs $52bn. But that is not even near what is required. That is only for climate mitigation.”

He said investors see Caribbean countries have structural limitations and the project preparation is not adequate.

“And therefore what we require from you are projects that are properly structured, that are well prepared, that are environmentally sustainable and socially responsible, that are inclusive, that point to resilience and, of course, are fiscally responsive and responsible and bankable,” Mr Sinckler said.

“That is what the investors are saying; that we are falling short in the adequacy of preparation. And that is why we need you to look more closely at how you prepare projects.”

Five core pillars have been identified: Climate change and resilience building, disaster risk management, private sector growth and development of the economy, national security and citizen security, food security and nutrition security.

Mr Sinckler added: “The project should have a regional focus or impact. Or if it is a national project, it has to fit within the national priorities as expressed by the Government in the country, in this case, The Bahamas, in terms of the national development priorities. And then it should have or be able to be replicated elsewhere.

“Because one of the things we don't want to do is to keep knowledge only in one country in the Caribbean. We want to ensure that if you have something that you've done well, and you're prepared to share that intellectual property, you're prepared to share those ideas that you should be able to do so, and we can do exchanges between the countries, so people to come and see what was done, how you've done it and so forth. As we said, it must respond to an area that is determined by the country or the region to be of importance, and that can be in any any area. And, of course, that the project fitted IDB eligibility.”