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Likely Future Gov't To Reevaluate PPP Projects
Thursday 17 June 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, June 17 (TASR) - The likely future Slovak government made up of SDKU-DS, Freedom and Solidarity (SaS), the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) and Most-Hid wants to re-evaluate the construction of roads financed through public-private partnership (PPP) projects, it was revealed Thursday in a joint briefing.
All four parties, however, announced at the same time that they are interested in making use of this form of financing.
One problem could be the Civic Conservative Party (OKS) representatives Peter Zajac, Ondrej Dostal, Frantisek Sebej and Peter Osusky, who've become new MPs thanks to featuring on the Most-Hid party slate and their showing in preferential balloting. "I think that the intention to build through PPP should be strongly re-considered ... mainly from the point of view of the effectivity and whether the project costs will not be higher than if they were built through a standard procedure," said Dostal.
He claims that if the use of PPP projects inherently mean higher costs the speeded-up construction of roads this way should be rethought.
Most-Hid, however, is not against PPP projects. "It is our interest to re-evaluate this from the effectivity point of view, so that we build for so much money as it is inevitable," said Most-Hid's vice-chair Zsolt Simon.
KDH vice-chairman Anton Marcincin pointed out that his party is not totally set on stopping the construction of roads using PPP. "We can't, however, be building roads at any price, because basically nothing is done for any price, otherwise there would be absolutely no need for any economic analyses, no effectivity assessment, no planning ... nothing ... as if we would say the price doesn't matter at all," he explained.
Both the strongest opposition party SDKU-DS, as well as the second-strongest non-parliamentary SaS claim that the problem lies in the analyses. "It can't be possible that several analyses show an overpricing worth billions of euro, that can't be normal," said Stanislav Janis from SDKU-DS.
"We are not against PPP projects, but they can't be overpriced. PPP is a common way of financing of road construction, as well as other constructions throughout Europe and the world," added Martin Chren from SaS.
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