Public-private partnership is gaining popularity in the development sector throughout the world, especially in the resource-starved countries; and such a partnership is being seen as the ultimate solution of the development problems.
There is growing evidence to believe that governments and NGOs have accepted reasons for 'working together as partners' and complement each other's efforts. During the past few years, Pakistan has invested some collaborative development interventions.
As a result, the macro project like Khushhali Bank, Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital and Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplant and a number of small projects with NGOs like HANDS, OPP and SGA in Sindh at grass roots level have come into existence.
However the relationship between the government and NGOs has yet to grow mature, smooth, and trouble-free. At the advent of the new model of governance envisaged in the devolution plan having provision of setting up citizen community boards (CCBs) throughout the country, and perhaps this is the right time to understand the new development mechanisms.
What is public private partnership? The Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships has adopted the following definition to help clarify the concept: "a cooperative venture between the public and private sectors, built on the expertise of each partner, that best meets clearly defined public needs through the appropriate allocation of resources, risks and rewards."
Three sectors: Public, commercial and non-profit (NGO) sectors in many developing countries are not keeping pace with what is needed to promote growth. As the private sectors (profit and non-profit) are underdeveloped and government resources dwindling, new ideas and strategies such as partnerships between government, profit and non-profit sectors are urgently needed. The three sectors which have common goals can take advantage of their separate strengths to achieve the social objectives.
In theory, the non-profit sector exists with a vision of social development through people's initiatives, while profit sector exists to make profit and therefore it applies market-based solutions to problems.
The public sector, by contrast, attempts to ensure equity and access for citizens and redresses problems of market failure.
A key question that arises with the expansion of the private sector is, how to control quality, particularly in health and education. Much of the expansion has come at the low end and often involves institutions of questionable quality.
The major issues here include ensuring efficiency, preventing inequality in care, keeping costs down, and ensuring quality and managing the competition for resources, both economic and human, between the public and private sectors.
Despite the realization of need of public-private partnership, there exists bitter reality as mistrust and undermining the strengths of each other. Some obstacles found in building private-public partnership in South Asia were: a) strained NGO-government relations; b) secularity in nature;and c) internal challenges.
Strained relations: Relations between governments and NGOs are complex and vary considerably from country to country. In many cases, NGOs have had considerable impacts on governments, either by offering models for government programmes, proposing reforms of existing policies, or criticizing proposed government policies, even to the point of organizing demonstrations or using more confrontational tactics.
These relations hinge on several factors including the fitness of the government, the type of political system, and the type and location of particular NGO projects.
The best relations occur where a confident and capable government with popular policies meets an NGO that wishes to pursue mainstream development programmes in a nations heartland.
Many governments have increasingly welcomed the participation of environmental and developmental NGOs with the creation of new democratic governments in Latin America.
For example, many new collaborative initiatives have been launched between NGOs and the new governments to seek novel approaches to development. NGOs have begun to act as subcontractor for government programmes and to collaborate with government ministries. The basis of strained relationship of NGOs with governments can be summed up as follows:
* lack of understanding of each others' goals;
* inability of government to identify the types of NGO who might become reliable working partners;
* restrictive government procedures;
* problems of attitude on both sides (mistrust);
* lack of clear policies on NGOs;
* poor communications among NGOs and between NGOs and governments;
* sharp contrasts between the top-down working methods of government and the participatory approaches of NGOs.
* poor understanding of relative strengths and weaknesses on both sides;
* lack of NGOs accountability to their clients;Once a partnership has been established, problems may then be caused by the following sets of factors:
* incompatible working methods of government with NGOs;
* with the government banking system, which was slow and bureaucratic, RDRS of India attempt to work through the government's tendering system, which halted progress.
* conflicts over vested interests in the rural power structure e.g. failure of Proshika's (an NGO) forestry programme in Bangladesh.
* contradictory objectives of collaborator, for example, BRAC's (Bangladesh based one of the biggest NGOs of the world) interest in establishing sustainable government services in its poultry project contrasted with government's desire for more effective input delivery in the short-term.
Other examples include the numerous points at which Aga Khan Rural Support Programme's views on policy reform in the forestry sector were the demands of hearing by government.
From NGOs point of view, governments in the region do not prioritize the poor, do not realize potentials, do not accept the term 'democratic pluralism'. They are bureaucratic, inefficient, corrupt, rigid in attitude and do not accept NGOs as partners, but considers them as controlled sub-sectors.
Conversely, governments feel that NGOs are too independent of governments, irresponsible, over-reliant on external funds, unpatriotic, not transparent, unacceptable, corrupt, put question about governments' right of control and government policies, usurper of governments money and donations and lacks in volunteerism.
b) Secularity: NGOs largely believe in service of humanity and discourage the division of service on caste, languages, sects and religions until and unless they exist for the promotion of certain religious thoughts or specific caste or tribe.
Hence, the NGOs, especially in developing countries, are harassed and intimidated by the religious groups and strict control over their activities by the state.
c) Challenges: NGOs themselves have the following weaknesses. They:
* posses limited technical capacity to cope with the complex problems;
* lack in ability to develop community organization;
* are ignorant toward strategic perspective and linkages with other factors of national importance;
* lack managerial and organizational capabilities;
* have limited financial resources and are donor dependent.
As mentioned above besides mistrust, the three sectors are prey to the confusion and egoism. However the ice is breaking with slow penetration rate. To accelerate the ice breaking process, the following steps are suggested:
Right projects: There is no shortage of potential projects for the public-private partnership approach. Early meetings invariably produce a long shopping list of possibilities.
The key is to choose the right project; one that meets the criteria set out earlier, and has real commitment from the public and private sectors locally to make it succeed.
Commitment: Ideally in fact, every project needs commitments from the two sectors. High-level local political commitment is particularly important. For example, the progress achieved by Grameen Bank in Bangladesh owes much to the fact that it had a high-profile commitment showed by the Grameen Trust; an NGO led by Dr. Younus Khan and the government of Bangladesh.
Local support: Identifying local support has been extremely important to the success of a project. The local NGOs have great potentials in leading on the ground by advising on local priorities, contributing contacts, and offering a link to government and local NGOs.
The collaboration with NGOs have proved particularly fruitful for the people of rural Malir, Karachi, when Darsano Channo Union Council, Malir, and HANDS. an intermediary NGO, built partnership to run the Jamkando Hospital.
Packages: Small or medium-sized projects need to be packaged to attract investor interest. Larger projects have their own dynamism. Smaller ones have disproportionately higher transaction costs and political risks.
If you add in the innovation of securing eco-efficiency goals and waste minimization, the crucial importance of packaging, brokering, negotiating, persuading, and convincing becomes clear.
Process: There are no short cuts to a public-private partnership project. The host government has to be persuaded of the concept. Projects have to be identified. Private investors have to be found. Public and private partners have to be brought together.
The process needs to be explained carefully at the outset to the project partners. It is a complicated and time-consuming jigsaw to piece together and it begins with careful groundwork and preparation.
But proper preparation is the essential ingredient to the political, economic and sustainability viability of the project.
Reconciliation: The public sector administration culture being procedure/process driven, the commercial sector entrepreneurial cultures, being results-driven and NGOs' voluntary culture, being missionary zeal driven, are fundamentally different.
Issues like the cost of time delays; indecision or limit to idealism can be important barriers to partnership and have handicapped public projects using the old, traditional approach.
Yet there is no inherent reason why the public sector should be less efficient than the private sector. The Public-private partnership model is designed to cut through this problem by stimulating the public sector into understanding that it shares responsibility, and the cost of issues like delay and indecisiveness.
Mutual trust: The public and private sectors have little experience of working together except they have the reference of regulators and regulated. Partnership having the basis of shared ownership, as well as responsibility makes a project successful.
The public-private partnership model, in which marriage broker, and midwife for the project, provides the vehicle for developing a trust and confidence level that helps to iron out problems and avoid the traditional adversarial posturing between the three sectors.
Getting both sides to the table to consider problems together and identify joint solutions is a critical first step. This gives them a shared interest in the success of the new company. Through working together they come to understand each other's constraints and expectations.