Infrastructure investment is accelerating throughout the GCC countries, creating a favorable and ideal environment for international investment and partnerships.
Thomas Kuruvilla, the Managing Partner of Arthur D. Little Middle East, highlights the importance of strengthening aspects of public-private partnerships. He stated that the collaboration between the public sector solvency with the private sector efficiency and flexibility is a winning combination, and a critical component in making the region’s infrastructure ambitions a reality.
The UAE continuously invests heavily in infrastructure, while Saudi and Qatar, continue to pump investments to develop infrastructure across a variety of sectors.
Similarly, Bahrain declared ambitious plans in this regard for the coming years.
These countries’ governments have already laid a solid foundation for new projects that are expected to be implemented in the next five to ten years.
According to Kuruvilla, government organizations and their resources are not always the best alternative for establishing infrastructure projects due to incurring significant expenses, as well as delays in project delivery and unfulfilled potential.
The writer excludes Dubai and Singapore, whose governments have achieved record successes and effective results similar to those achieved by private companies.
Saudi is an outstanding example
Moreover, Kuruvilla points to Saudi as an example in this field, citing how its government tried to understand why public-private partnerships had failed in the past and how it began developing proper policies and frameworks to get them back on the right track.
Among the accomplishments, Saudi has so far named 18 PPP-based projects for a total of $42.9 billion.
According to Kuruvilla, public-private partnerships are a key component of the National Transformation Program, which aims to promote private sector GDP participation from 40 percent in 2016 to 65 percent in 2030.
