Editorial  

Delegated management of urban services
  A four-way partnership  
 

This Lettre de l'Isted comes just at the right moment. Throughout the world, the management of public commercial services is increasingly being delegated to the private sector. And experience has shown that this form of management enhances productivity and quality of service, reduces the State's financial burden, provides new funding for the development of urban facilities and stimulates the emergence of a competitive domestic private sector. The impact is therefore significant both for cities and their inhabitants and for the country and its institutions. 

Several countries in the "ZSP" (zone de solidarité prioritaire ? France's priority solidarity area) have set the ball rolling (Senegal, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Central African Republic). But most privatizations are still to come and will require an increasingly customized response. For although the need for privatization and liberalization, each in their own way, is self-evident, the extent of the reform, what steps to take and how to take them, are still open to question. 

The debate centres on the following key issues: the specific type of privatization for each public service; the specific nature of each sector (water, electricity, telecommunications, railways) which determines economic and institutional logical approaches: geographical or function-based breakdowns, the importance of regulations to control any monopoly situations and, more broadly, supervise the way competition works; the diversity of legal procedures (continuing or discontinuing State involvement, concessions, lease and operate agreements etc.); the role of donor organizations and financial instruments (market-friendly or concession-based) to be proposed according to the types of investment. 

Liberalization/privatization operations have much to gain from four-way partnerships bringing together the conceding public authorities, private sector contractors, international donors and financial institutions that mobilize local savings. The examples of "experience feedback" described in this Lettre de l'Isted throw considerable light on the global public/private partnership issue. 
 

 Antoine Pouillieute,
General Manager of AFD  

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