Country Experience with Unsolicited PPP Proposals: Distinct, Diverse, Disparate

Traditionally, infrastructure service delivery has been the responsibility of government. In some cases, government may solicit private partners to help deliver projects; these are solicited PPPs. There’s another way to go about this, where the private sector tries to jump-start a project by submitting a project proposal without a government request; these are unsolicited proposals (USPs) for projects.

The World Bank, with support from the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF), developed policy guidelines for managing USPs in infrastructure projects to provide a framework for considering and managing USPs and for developing a USP policy. The guidelines’ recommendations are based on an in-depth review of global best practices on USP policies and projects in more than 15 countries.

In 2018, a World Bank team also took advantage of the Asia PPP Network conference, organized by the Korean Development Institute (KDI) in Seoul, to conduct a workshop on USPs for 12 participating countries: Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cook Islands, Georgia, India, Kazakhstan, Lao PDR, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Samoa.