São Paulo – São Paulo state’s government announced this Tuesday (21st) the launching of a Partnership Digital Platform with the goal to speed up and expand the dialogue between the public and private sectors on the elaboration of public-private (PPPs) partnership projects and concessions.
According to Isadora Cohen, responsible for the PPPs agency of the state government, in the first half of August foreign investors will be able to access the system in English at www.parcerias.sp.gov.br. For now, only a Portuguese version is available.
With this initiative, the government is hoping to increase the number of investors interested in the state’s projects. “The foreign investor will follow the same procedures [as followed by Brazilians]”, said Cohen. The project has the support of the World Bank.
Through the system, those interested will be able to propose partnerships to the government when filling in an online form that will work as a “only channel”, that means, the investor won’t have to resort to several different state’s agencies to present the proposal, since all the needed steps will be integrated by the platform.
The government promises to make available a textbook about partnerships to serve as a step-by-step for foreign investors.
“Before, the investor would take his proposal and search for someone to hear him out”, said Cohen. The monitoring of the initiative’s progress also had to be done from agency to agency. Now, according to her, “all those” involved will be linked to the virtual environment. The government guarantees that the answers to the propositions will be given in a 60-day period.
The proposal will be analyzed by the necessary agencies but, in advance, the deal should comply with state’s guidelines, such as, for instance, to have an anticipation of the type of initiative in the Multi-annual Plan, and those interested have to demonstrate minimally its economic and finaical viability.
Through the platform, the government will also be able to promote its demands with the goal to generate expressions of interest by the investors, and receive proposals and studies pertaining to the topic.
According to Cohen, the partnerships and concessions are priorities for the state due to fiscal and budget restrictions coming from the country’s macro-economic situation. At the launching of the digital platform, governor Geraldo Alckmin, for instance, took the opportunity to announce that subway Line 5-Lilás in the city of São Paulo will be the object of a concession to the private sector.
According to Cohen, expectations around the platform and a decree about the procedures issued this Tuesday, is to provide more speed and transparency to the analysis of PPPs proposals and concessions and to bring closer the interested parts. The monitoring of the processes online could be made not only by those involved, but by any citizen. “There will be clarity [in the processes] and there will be a greater answer about if a proposal will or will not be employed”, she added.
The idea is that after all bureaucratic procedures and approvals needed, the proposal can become a project and go through a bidding process.
The government reported that there are, currently, 11 PPPs running contracts in the states, in the areas of public transportation, health, sanitation, road infrastructure and housing, plus 20 concessions in the transportation sector and three in the distribution of piped gas.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
