INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT BY USING PUBLIC - PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP (PPP) POLICY:A CASE STUDY OF YANGON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT EXPANSION, MYANMAR

Abstract

Infrastructure development is crucial to economic development of developing countries. Due to the financial, technical and management facilities are lacking, many countries have undertaken infrastructure development projects via smart partnerships with the international or private organizations. Such partnership where the private sector engages in public assets is called Public- Private Partnership (PPP). The new civilian government of Myanmar has embarked on a PPP policy to develop local infrastructure and encourage growth. In line with its PPP policy, this is the expansion project of Yangon International Airport (YIA), one of the major transport gateways in Myanmar. This research focused on the transparency and accountability of government regulations and procedures in PPP projects using the case-study of YIA. The objectives of research are to analyze the development of YIA and to estimate the project risks under the current PPP practices.The research used qualitative method to obtain data using document analysis as well as via interviews with relevant stakeholders such as technical experts from aviation units, government’s authority, airport users and shared private companies. The expansion for YIA is one the first projects using PPP policy in Myanmar. This PPP programme will be started before the end of 2014 for reconstruction, expansion, operations, management and maintenance work. There are the findings of negative points in YIA such as unclear tender selection, poor regulations and procedure delaying. But it has also good point that the policy is moving towards international practices .So, the research is able to determine that the current PPP policy is beneficial to YIA development but there weaknesses in terms of implementation of the regulations and procedures. It is hoped that this research can contribute important data on lessons learnt for future PPP projects especially in the airport infrastructure development field of Myanmar.