Member Article

The Interinstitutional Committee for PPP has enacted new regulations for submission of PPPs Projects for its analysis and approval. This new regulation contains the minimum requirements and guidelines that a PPP Project must fulfill to obtain the prior authorization of the Interinstitutional Committee for PPP, before the public entity initiates the bidding process.

Such guidelines are applicable for unsolicited proposals, as well as for projects of public initiative, either for brownfield or greenfield projects. Depending of the type of such projects, the applicable provisions that must be fulfilled by the proponent.

If the PPP Project do not fulfill with these provisions, the Interinstitutional Committee for PPP is entitled to deny the Project, and the public entity cannot be able to promote it, nor initiate the bidding process. This authorization will be also useful for the obtaining of the tax incentives contained in the PPP Law.

These new regulations cover a grey area that was existing regarding the initial stages of a PPP Project (structuring), in which the firsts PPP projects had their main observations. This is because each of them had their own regulations and provisions, that were established without a common legal framework that applied to all the projects without any exemption.

It is also important to mention that the Technical Secretariat of the Interinstitutional Committee was repealed by the former President, therefore the is not a permanent PPP body that manage all these norms. In addition, the Ministry Coordinator of the Employment, Production and Commerce (MCPEC) was also repealed by the current President. Most of the public officers that used to work at the Interinstitutional Committee were part of this Ministry.

Nowadays the government is performing structural modifications to the public entities to align to the Austerity Plan that was promoted in the political campaign. Nevertheless, the new authorities related with the PPP sector are pending to be appointed.

It is expected that by the end of this year the pending regulations for PPP have been enacted by the Interinstitutional Committee, and an amendment to the PPP Law will be proposed to the National Assembly. This will boost this legal mechanism to cover the lack of infrastructure, in all of its phases such as construction, operation and maintenance; that currently are not being duly served by the public entities.

For a more detail information regarding such specific provisions, please contact Alejandro Pérez Arellano, Specialist Attorney in PPP at [email protected]