Brazil To Set Up PPP Planning Fund

The Brazilian government, through its development bank BNDES, and in conjunction with the IFC and IDB, is looking to set up a $40m fund to help plan public-private partnerships for infrastructure projects, Mauricio Ribeiro, director of Brazil’s PPP program, tells LatinFinance. “Today, the bottleneck [for PPP infrastructure projects] is not the lack of funding or the legal framework for projects. It’s the capacity to analyze, and plan these projects,” says Ribeiro, adding that on top of a slow, bureaucratic system that takes up to eight months to approve a project, Brazil’s public sector is lacking in qualified professionals to plan and direct the funds for projects, thanks to a mass departure to the private sector during the privatizations of the 1990s and early 2000s. “The main issue we have to face is that we don’t have the capacity to launch the number of projects we need to put forth in the next few years.” Ribeiro, who spoke on a panel on construction finance in Latin America at Silas, says the solution lies in an offshore fund, staffed with a team that will source top of the line consultants and planners from around the globe and prepare proposals and logistical solutions that can be presented to Brazilian lawmakers and governments for approval. In question, however, is whether the BNDES, which has recently undergone a change of leadership, will continue to support this project, which was begun under the former president Demian Fiocca. Ribeiro says the fund will be managed by the IFC and adopt the World Bank’s bidding and proposal guidelines.