Public-Private Partnerships: Public Costs, Private Gain

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Private sector participation in areas that were previously under the dominant control of public institutions is now being presented as beneficial, in terms of revenue generation for the government and improvement of service to the public, through Public-Private Partnership (PPP). However, practical experience has been showing how the imbalances in costs and benefits that are shared between governments and private for-profit entities are resulting to failures in service delivery and further public burden.

In this light, this short video reveals how the failure of privatization globally in the past decades, as manifested in massive layoffs of workers, higher cost of public services, and loss of public accountability, has led the advocates of neoliberal structural reforms, specifically International Financial Institutions (IFIs), to repackage the same model in a more palatable name (i.e. PPP). Moreover, it tries to unmask the lopsided relationship governments have with the private sector in a PPP set-up and describes how the public, especially the poor, is further economically dislocated and marginalized with governments engaging in PPP.