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hello everyone this is how a man speaking on the senior international law advisor with a ISDN it's my pleasure to host this webinar today on behalf of AIA SD and our partners I want to thank everybody for joining us I hope you can all hear us it's like please Sophia what we're gonna talk about today is the issue of private partner partnerships ppp's and in particular the legal contracts that are used to support ppp's there's no doubt that building and accessing infrastructure is a critical issue today infrastructure is a critical need for sustainable development but it's also true that how we spend the money on infrastructure is itself a critical driver for sustainable development and we'll be looking at those two linkages to some extent today it's light please the key issue for today is is how those linkages are reflected in the actual PPP contracts so we'll look primarily at what is in the current model contracts in particular those proposed by the World Bank and to some extent UNCITRAL and others at the at the multilateral level and focused primarily on the clauses that have been introduced so far but at the same time it's incredibly important to know what hasn't been included in those provisions to date despite numerous efforts by some governments and civil society organizations to get them included and that's an indication or clear linkages in the contract provisions to ensure that an infrastructure makes a maximum contribution itself to promoting sustainable development that includes the broader range of SDG sustainable development goals and it includes major issues relating to climate change including resilience to weather events and making sure that new energy and other sources of potential GHG emissions greenhouse gas emissions are mitigated to the maximum extent possible those issues have not been reflected to date and what we see proposed the multilateral level slide please what I've put up here what we've put up here is a just a reference back to a document that Martin brow of ISD produced a couple of years ago on what elements need to be included in infrastructure comm contracts for them to reflect those types of linkages so I encourage everyone at some point everyone who hasn't looked at this document to go back to it as well slide please I'd like to welcome our three speakers today the first one is Beatrice Florence at kept Aquila who is vice chair of the UN Economic Commission for Europe working party on PPP's and is the team leader on ppp's in the Ministry of Finance planning and economic development for Uganda and she'll give a perspective on PPP issues from her her role in that context the second speaker will be multi colas alwah who is the coordinator for the observatory of sustainable infrastructure multikills experience in this area goes back a few decades with work both in the private sector and at the IFC International Finance Corporation part of the World Bank and she's one of the world's leading experts on business and human rights issues also and finally Janice Brennan is of Council that fully Hogue Hawaii one of the leading American and international law firms an affirm that is very very well-known for representing and reflecting in particularly developing country interests on major international development concerns so with that let me go first to Beatrice and give the floor to you please Beatrice oh sorry I have one more thing to do if I can come back if we can go back one slide thank you sorry but that we will be having a Q&A session immediately after the presentation we invite you to use the chat function that's on at the bottom of your screen if you're hopefully you're on a computer if you just scroll down or use your mouse to go down to the bottom of the screen you'll see a chat function you can enter your questions there and then we can come back to them at the end of all the presentations okay and now back to Beatrice please oh thank you very much I didn't get your names on how a man Howard man thank you very much for that wonderful introduction good afternoon everyone I'm sorry I'm late because I thought the teleconference was at 3:00 you can done time so I think those three Geneva time so I'm sorry I'm late but to set the ball rolling would be building a Yanni Brennan and and everybody who is there my name is a Beatrice flora Akhil I the vice-chair on the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and I am a certified public private partnership from Harvard University her training from University of Queensland in in Australia I had training in University of Queens in Canada I have been to University of Pretoria South Africa I've been to infrastructure UK just to understand public/private partnerships so from them from where I sit I happen to be the paeonia director of the public private partnership unit of the government of Uganda where was responsible for the establishment of the policy legal regulatory and institutional framework for the PPP's in my country and we also undertook a country they urbanistic study to country domestic studies purposely to understand government's readiness to do public-private partnerships we also undertook development of a PPP pipeline basically to ensure that we have an investment tool or a pool of projects that we can use to attract the private sector players into the PPP space back to what you want me to talk about PPP is especially from the less debauch country's perspective and give a focus of Uganda a couple of challenges the key challenge is ability to understand exactly what PPP's are so you find in a room I might be the only one or with another person closer to me who is able to understand what I am talking about in terms of public-private partnerships because several people have different perspectives or what they believe is public-private partnerships so the aspect of capacity to understand first of all the structuring of PPP's capacity to talk to to understand the legal implications of PPP's capacities to understand the financing of ppp's and what kind of projects should be done as PPP's is a big thing in Africa because it is it is not it is not PPP is not something which is straightforward straightforward animal so it needs to be understood and to follow up on that at the UN ECE I got appointed last year as a vice-chair on the UN ECE and one of the key things that I have done is to organize a high-level event which is a public-private partnerships Africa's next big thing because from my past experience I realized that actually many governments even the presidents don't understand exactly what PPP's are including the ministers were actually responsible for infrastructure development so in this problem this event we are going to be having a pre-conference training basically to bring people up to speed with the public-private partnerships and a few Jagan's in public-private partnerships but we also going to talk about bridging infrastructure gap African Development Bank estimates that first of all say is that Africa is a nice continent with very good Natural Resources very good people but it organizes with infrastructure challenges either there is limited infrastructure or there's no infrastructure at all and it has missed that infrastructure gap is between 130 to 170 billion dollars per annum and the financing is between 68 and 108 billion dollars per annum so it is a gap so they are saying how do you fill this gap so the conference will be focusing on how to fill the infrastructure gap but also how to fill the financing gap but the discussion also will be around whether people actually understand what ppp's involve the different clauses in different PPP contracts and why those equals and the contracts and whether they would be able to understand or interpret the implication of some of those those PPP contractual clauses in terms of PPP readiness in Africa a couple of countries have PPP regulatory environments or enabling environments but most of them do not have the regulatory environment although they are going ahead to do public-private partnerships so at the UN ECE I happen to be appointed as a vice chair but I represent the whole of Africa so after this conference I intend to travel across Africa basically to understand the countries that under that that have some enabling environmental TPP's but also the countries that do not have any enabling environment or PPP's basically could profile these countries and d-bob solutions on how best to help these countries in their infrastructure development and in their aspirations to bridge the infrastructure gap in their different countries I have a lot to say about this topic and I think for now I beg to stop there Thank You Beatrice I think there's a very helpful introduction to the broad range of issues and challenges I'll move right away to motor co if I can and motor co will give an overview of a number of developments and processes going on at the international level more to go if you please unmuted please okay can you hear me I hope so yes we can yes thank you hello everybody first of all thank you to ISD for including me in this webinar with the next few slides I'd like to discuss the latest developments in policy and law that influence the way in which PPP's are structured and documented my view is that overall as Howie said there is a pretty profound lack of sufficient guidance on how countries can incorporate sustainable development considerations both in terms of realizing public benefits and public good and also in terms of mitigating risks and that there is a lack of balance shall we say between the interests of investors and those of the state but with that let let us get going and let's look at the first slide next slide please thank you as Beatriz mentioned we are all quite fixated on the infrastructure financing gap so the most well known estimate of the gap is by the global Commission on the economy and climate who predicted that we're going to need up to 90 trillion dollars for infrastructure financing by the year 2030 the World Bank has predicted that we're going to need twice as much infrastructure spending according to the Asian Development Bank Asia alone needs 26 trillion dollars and the OECD said six point three trillion dollars would be needed annually until 2030 that's annually and we should add 10% for climate action so those are significant numbers let's look at the next slide so this is the latest forecast by the g2 tee's global infrastructure hub they have an initiative called the infrastructure outlook and they are predicting 97 trillion now until the year 2040 and this is only based on data from 56 countries so this amounts to 18 trillion dollars in terms of investment gap if you look below at 2019 we are estimating the investment need that takes also SDGs into account that gap is at three point three trillion dollars the next slide please and this is just a breakdown of the infrastructure investment gap by region you can see the significant amounts needed as well as the investment gap for each region again based on 56 countries think your next slide so the multilateral Development Bank's have been asked to really increase their efforts to maximize private investments in infrastructure including PPP's and the MDBs have put forward this approach called maximizing finance for development the screen is from the World Bank's program it's a very snazzy program that you can see video you can see right on the web here but basically this approach is to entice the private sector and particularly institutional investors to make more investments in infrastructure and so the approach asks asks several questions in cascading manner first of all can a particular deal be financed by the private sector on commercial terms if not the World Bank will offer for regulatory and policy reform to create an enabling environment for the private sector if that's not enough then then the World Bank will try to help Deere risk projects by offering financial products offering blended finance and so on and so forth to mitigate risks and if that is still not enough then the public sector financing option can be considered so basically I think it is quite striking that putting this approach puts public finance at the bottom of the Cascade as a last resort this is both problematic and unrealistic considering that most infrastructure projects are currently publicly financed okay next slide please also in order to address this infrastructure gap the g20 has been doing at making all sorts of proposals and initiatives and so this slide captures what the Argentinian g20 proposed at the end of last year they focused a lot on standardization of infrastructure investment and they actually came up with this idea that infrastructure should be offered as an asset class just as much as investors invest in cash or in stock or in bonds they should be able to invest in infrastructure just like that and the g20 promoted among other things securitization as a financial product that would be particularly suitable for institutional investors to make direct and indirect investments in infrastructure the g20 also thought that governments have too much variation in terms of project preparation from project appraisal to approval to implementation so the g20 put forward principles for the project preparation phase which are a bunch of principles which are very high-level principles and I really don't understand how states can implement that but that's something that came out directly from the g20 last year and finally they were very big on standardization of contracts and this is really the topic of the the rest of the webinar here okay let's move on to the next slide thank you so among other efforts the g20 the OECD and the World Bank did the stock take of tools in instruments related to infrastructure as an asset class this was offered last summer and basically they put together they went through all the tools available by different from different institutions and they put them into these these categories that you see on the left-hand side of the screen from project related to policy related tools and then project related and at the bottom of project related they have a bunch of things that they offer for transaction support and contract management the next slide please and so if you zoom in right there the stock take found that there are instruments for to promote more disclosure in PPP's there is this World Bank Group guidance on PPP contractual provisions which we'll come back to and the global in infrastructure hub has offered this very detailed risk allocation matrices for different sectors so all of these are available through the OECD document which is available in turn in the resource are part of the web link that we will provide later on next slide please now this is just some of the examples even though the OECD our effort counted about 90 initiatives there are other initiatives ongoing so let me just touch on those very briefly the UN Commission on international trade law that's unser trial for short is updating its quite outdated legislative guide on privately financed infrastructure this is now to be called model PPP law because there are about hundred and forty jurisdictions that offer PPP laws I think that this initiative is very important but unfortunately there seems to be a fairly low-level stakeholder interest particularly interest from States and so this process has received very little attention to date there is a submission that I made to answer 12 which is also available as part of the resource document for this webinar there are also two newish initiatives the UN Economic Commission for Europe you and ECE is also working on a model PPP law in collaboration with EBRD & peeta which is the program for infrastructure development in Africa has a model law for infrastructure development which I don't think it's quite finalized yet but I think it's very close so these are something to keep an eye on in the future the next slide please so because there are so many people P laws I wanted to understand exactly what they are offering in terms of sustainability content and so in collaboration with Monash University's international economic law clinic I did a study a review of PPP laws of 18 sub-saharan African countries and this is j st a very quick sum up of what we found that laws generally failed to sufficiently mention sustainable development relevant environmental and social standards and laws community participation or alignment with national development plans even though there are obviously some good examples that exist and so that the pie chart down there just indicates the breakdown of the most frequently mentioned issues the transparency issue comes up number one but the overall the percentage is very very small thank you the next slide please and so I would like to finish by quoting there a song way who is the executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa she was the keynote speaker at the UN ECE international forum on PPP just last month and she mentioned very clearly PPP contracts are heavily skewed against the contracting authorities and I think this is a very serious observation that she made and so we're gonna try and unpack a little bit what this means but just to sum up countries all the countries in the world have signed up to the SDGs the Paris agreement most of them are signatory to signatories to international human rights treaties multilateral environmental agreements and yet these considerations are insufficiently reflected in illegal instruments that support PPP's there is just way too much emphasis on bank ability and way too much interest in getting the regulatory environment attractive to the private sector and this leads to contracts that not only lacks contracts that lack sustainability content but also there is not a proper balance between state interests and investors interest and this is I think what miss song who I said I meant when she said PPP contracts are heavily skewed against contracting authorities so with that I will finish thank you very much thank you very much multi CO and that's really a perfect way to end your opening comments and transition to Janice essentially Janice will begin to explain why the current model of contracts that we see being promoted by organizations like the World Bank are so heavily skewed against contracting authorities of government so with with that heavy task set out for you Janice and I turn it over to you thank you very much Howie and thank you also Motoko and Beatrice for wonderful presentations I assume you can all hear me you we can okay thank you Howie yes it and it is a perfect segue into what my task is this morning to talk about because I using the World Bank guidance on PPP contractual provisions as an example of what miss Vera's song way has had to say about the way in which ppp's contracts are skewed against the government contracting authorities the world the current version and really all iterations so far the World Bank guidance are a perfect example of that can you change a new slide please so just to give a little bit of background as to how the World Bank guidance documents has come come about the first iteration of it was a 2015 edition it Motoko gave a good overview of what the thinking of the bank was with regard to promulgating this document one short phrase has been used to describe it is billions to trillions the concept of taking billions of dollars locked up in in institutional investors and other investors in Western what we took in developed countries and through development in infrastructure turned that into trillions of dollars the guidance documents focus focuses not on all aspects of PPP contracts because as you can imagine the every PPP contract will have different business and operational parameters so those types of things are very difficult to standardize but the guidance document focuses on legal provisions of contracts and we'll look at what those are in a moment what those legal provisions in the are in the guidance the guidance does not envision the government as a shareholder in the PPP so in a way the calling these contractual provisions PPP provisions is a little bit misleading because it's not really a partnership in the sense of joint ownership certainly there was subsequently a 20-17 edition of the document our firm as as well as a ISD Observatory the high moral foundation did a lot and other civil society groups did a lot of work on the version that was this the 2017 version pointing out the lack of balance between the contracting parties and the lack of content on sustainable development we also engaged with the legal advisors to the World Bank for the guidance they're not very well known law firm Allen & Overy we have two very lengthy calls with them to discuss the the specific provisions in the guidance document and the there is now a 20-19 edition of the guidance it was open for consultation for in February to April of this year but there was only one formal consultation in Singapore there were no consultations in Africa or Latin America but the government participants in the consultation that did take place ranked environmental and social risk as one of the top concerns and we'll see how that plays out in the language that is in the guidance at this point there were three new chapters added to the guidance which I'll address later and the document itself is it was will was is expected to be submitted to the g20 summit that is currently unfolding in Japan on next slide please this slide gives an overview a listing really of the type of gun of the contractual provisions that are included in the guidance as to each one of these away the guidance document is structured there is a multi-page narrative as on each topic and then at the end of the chapter devoted to that topic draft proposed a draft language for actual provisions in the contracts the looking at the right-hand column the new provisions in the 2019 guidance at work in previous editions are the contracted Authority step and rights hand back of assets at a contract in and the and let's see oh yes a termination an addition to the termination provisions the stated objective of the guidance is to assist governments in emerging PPP markets with obtaining with obtaining a better and more comprehensive understanding of provisions encountered in PPP contracts certainly these type of provisions are encountered in PPP contract but of the we will talk in detail about or high-level about how this manifests itself in the guidance document at next slide please there are the problematic features of the guidance at a high level view is that the guidance focuses on getting the PPP deal done quick and the word that's used over and over again in the guidance is bankability the starting point of the provisions in the contract is one in which the it the starting point in the guidance provisions particularly the sample drafting language is what would constitute really in many instances the worst possible deal for the host government and instead of giving a true balanced approach and options that that could be that that the parties could negotiate over all the the language places in Gordon find that in ordinate financial risks on the host government and it inhibits the government's ability to regulate or otherwise act to address invited the environment including clients change and climate change and as social issues put bluntly any post execution event that costs the private investor anything falls on the government shoulders the cost of that on and on paper although it seems to put money in the investors pocket in that the provisions in these clauses are so invest skewed towards the private investor but it creates huge contingent liabilities for the host government and really it results in the concept of bankability being a myth because unsustainable PPP's lead to disputes we know that we've seen that over the last thirty years in particular with the ongoing investor state dispute some of which arise out of contracts some out of treaties at least to disputes that take years to resolve and by years I mean anywhere from four to ten years to resolve and even when even if an investor wins and arbitration or wins in a court depending on what contract provides for sovereign assets or immune and if the host government is not able or willing to pay the award or judgment there's really very little for an investor to collect against so entering into an unsustainable PPP is really the the highest risk that an investor could take on a truly useful guidance document would take a more balanced approach where we've met none of us have ever advocated for a document that skewed in favor of the host governments but what what is needed is some more balance of more balanced contractual provisions that would advise on how risk and rewards can be fairly and most importantly sustainably allocated the new provisions in the guidance the ones that are new to the 2019 version do provide a balanced approach that it's not perfect but but it seems to be written by a different hand than the one that wrote the many other provisions that have been in the guidance since its inception since a 2017 version certainly and really provide a template of the direction that the guidance document could go in next slide please and just to I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this but I want to take some sample provisions and give some flavor of specifically what the sample drafting length problems in the sample drafting language force-majeure events there are events that are totally beyond the the host government's control that constitute force majeure under these sample drafting language and that trigger massive government payments the same is true for the provisions that deal with material government actions and changes in law basically the private partner is insulated from the cost of complying with all subsequent legislation even where there's no discrimination against the private partner which is really contrary to the international law standard which generally requires discrimination and also protections from competition they're treated as Magga events and there may be appropriate instances in which protection from compensation sorry competition would be appropriate but there's no there's no catering to instances in which there are monopolies etc that that would need where the host government would need some flexibility a good example of that is electricity or energy monopolies where it would be impossible for the government to introduce renewable energy projects without triggering massive financial obligations to the private partner next like these also problems with the transparency provisions in the PPP in the World Bank guidance document sample drafting language primarily primary responsibility for transparency placed on the host government and no real provision for ongoing disclosure of contract terms contingent liability performance information and issues to do with environmental and social programs a failure to address those items governing law and dispute resolution I'll just focus for the moment on the the provisions of the guidance document that provide for ICC arbitration nothing against ICCE arbitration per se but there is no pairen see in that or any other type of commercial arbitration and also there is no catering for where you would have an overlap of causes of action by the private investor under the contract as well as under investment protection treaties you might wind up with two separate dispute resolution proceedings that really deal with the same the same issue next slide please just quickly to wrap up what can be done to improve the guidance we have made a number of suggest a number of suggestions to the World Bank we've submitted a document on April 30th containing a number of these focusing on the points you see on your screen with regard to these adding a sustainable development chapter the the guidance document needs to explain the relationship between the environment and social impact assessments and PPP provisions or updates or consequences on failures to comply with environmental and social impact assessments although there's some new language on climate change in the 2019 edition there is still places all of the cost on climate change on the host government and the recommendation that we have made is that the World Bank de la delay promulgation of the guidance until these types of steps are taken to result in a balanced really usable document for host governments next slide please and as a final point what can country governments and civil society do the most important thing is to take positions and speak out and to speak to the people who are pushing the guidance and other initiatives in that result in unbalanced sustainable PPP's there are some examples here of World Bank itself the EDS at the World Bank key government officials and there is an increased of movement towards intergovernmental regional initials initiatives but much more is needed in that area to insist that the bank and others involved in this the PPP promoting PPP's insist that they have meaningful console consultations and thinking outside the box I has personally always thought that the education of potential investors in the MPP PS from the private sector was important regarding the risk of unbalanced non-sustainable PPP's so I am I will wrap that up and turn the floor back over to Howie thank you all thanks very much Janis and want to go and beat this so we're going to open the webinar now two questions for those who have questions if you can find the chat function I either at the bottom or top of your screen all you have to do is click on chat and then you'll see the message box open and type your question into the message box hit enter and we should all be able to see the question so if you have some questions please do pick it up and start to do that I'm just looking I just got a chat now yes if for those if you want to speak your question you can do that also we can unmute you just just let us know you want to ask the question verbally instead of in writing Oh while we're doing that and those of you who wish to ask questions are preparing them I wanted to ask a question about one other risk that relates to the attractiveness of ppp's as a way of financing government procurement or government initiatives in what is said to be off-book financing in other words governments don't have to log those expenses as capital expenses there is some concern that the types of contractual provisions that the World Bank has promoted would actually negate that opportunity by loading so much risk on to the government that ratings organizations and accounting firms would in fact look at that financing as on book and therefore creating credit risks to government's wonder perhaps Multi coordinates if either of you could comment a little bit on that particular issue Thank You Howie this is moto Co maybe I can just get that started this is because a number of countries have had PPP binges in the past and they have experienced a fairly significant macro economic crisis leading to austerity programs and suspension of social programs and so on and so forth there is much more interest in getting countries to disclose these contingent liabilities that they take on and in fact a lot of countries offer all manners of financial inducements from subsidies student2 to guarantees to other measures in fact there's a long list of what countries can do some of which are directly in or - motivated by the fact that these countries actually can do this off-book precisely as how we mentioned so as IMF and others pushed for more transparency in this area and there are new tools that can expose countries taking on these additional debts I think there is a potential risk that countries credit rate could rating could be impacted by how much debt they take on how much contingent liabilities they take on because of PPP's and there's also a lot of discussion about debt sustainability this is one of the main topics coming out of the Japanese g20 that dealt with not only the quality a quantity side of infrastructure investment but also quality side and so the g20 is expected to endorse these g20 principles on quality infrastructure investment debt sustainability is one of the key topics there and so as there's going to be more interest in debt sustainability I think countries are going to have to think twice about the kinds of inducements that they provide to the private secto Thanks and this is Janice I would just that's a great overview Motoko and I would just add to that that everything that Motoko Motoko has just identified really argues once again for a holistic approach to PPP's typically governments enter into negotiations for PPP's on a fairly isolated basis and not taken into account the the overall financial impact on the country and sometimes not even on the country's policies with regard to national development as a whole where that sector so certainly the the current of pushing things on book has a major impact on that okay thank you both Caroline ngons e has asked the first question in the chat and all read it thank you very much Carol going for this it's a really critical question that cuts across a number of SD G's in although it also relates to specific ones so she starts thanks to all the panelists for this very informative webinar I would like to hear your thoughts on the integration of gender into PPP contractual clauses as per the recently released primer by the IFC on gender equality infrastructure and PPP's Beatrice maybe you want to take a first crack at that and then I'll give motor co and Janice an opportunity so I'll repeat the question I would like to hear your thoughts on the integration of gender into PPP contractual clauses as per the recently released primer by the IFC on gender equality infrastructure and PPP's interest in terms of agenda and PPP is inclusion in the framework that is a discussion that has not started but as I do my work I try to ensure that I take into account gender inclusion in PPP discussions PPP structuring and everything to do with the PPP's even in my discussions at the UN ECE my colleagues there have picked it up so we normally have sessions on infrastructure and the role of agenda even the conference that I have there is a specific session on the role of women in infrastructure our development this is a discussion that needs to happen because when I was in Geneva there was a lady from I think the World Bank she launched a book I think on women with gender agenda inclusion and infrastructure movement it's a discussion that needs to happen but my challenge is all the issues you raised a presentation from Motoko presentation from Yanni's it's a very pertinent decision discussion but why normally you find that these contracts are skewed or the financing arrangements are skewed or the structuring of these projects as skewed it's because of capacity I take you back to capacity because most of the government institutions I mean the government officials they do not understand what you're talking about when I was a director at the PPP unit they may under the Minister of Finance there's the debt Department to talk about the debt ceiling you talk about debt sustainability this department did not understand when government contracts these loans the implication of dis loans on on on the debt ceiling and now when you talk about ppp's and government is talking of getting the deifies in and the different financing arrangements for this PPP projects the department was find or kind of incapacitated they cannot understand the complexity surrounding some of these financing arrangements so it goes back to two capacities if you look at the league or the league or a section in government that is responsible for advising government all these their contractual arrangements they barely can't understand what you do their closest that you have because we had a challenge just to drafted a regulations for ppb's drafting the regulations for PPP's which i think is something which is would not be very hard they said we cannot draft these regulations because ppb's is quite a new thing and this the whole ministry in government that is responsible for advising government on everything legal so I think in addressing I'm running away from the question now in addressing the issues that you say what must we do I think we should go back to capacity if we can help these governments especially in Africa in understanding exactly what our ppp's and watch and how should these projects be structured first of all for government to get money I mean value but also to bring the private sector to account to account for whatever it is supposed to do because in Uganda we have developed what we call the transparency disclosure and accountability framework so why this this framework was developed is because in the past the different kind of projects we have entered into as public-private partnerships you find that the private sector was insulated from disclosing anything so there is one of the private sector players who is actually the electricity sector who the privately the public was viewing as extorting a lot of value from there from the front from there from the population so now the population was demanding the private sector to disclose what is the rate what is the tariff what is the price at which you charge a unit of electricity of course there's a little salty but deprive the public wanted the private sector to declare but the private sector said no I am not supposed to declare anything to you I'm only responsible to the private sector to day-to-day to the relator authoritative uh blick went up in arms and say no no we need you to disclose we need you to disclose and that now demanded for or resulted in the development of the transparency disclosure an accountability framework and this framework is double-edged but the government has to disclose and both the private sector has to disclose and it defines areas maybe where the private sector may not disclose but now they have opened it up the private sector is has to disclose by all means and they certainly aspects of the disclosure that they have to do so I'm sorry to run away from the question but I think I try to cover what thank you I think that's that's very helpful Beatrice I just let me come back to the gender and then we'll come back to the capacity issues that you raised as well as a couple of other questions that have been asked so Marco or Janice anything in particular any other issues in particular to reply to the question on gender and the inclusion of gender reflecting gender issues in the contractual provisions well I would just add quickly that to be interest comment that you know with with the unbalanced provisions of course a host government is going to wind up paying for any introduction of gender-based requirements for example that impact in a regulatory manner for example the private party and that money the money that contingent liability tape and actual liability if the government imposes those types of requirements or regulations later or even if the contracting phrase a face if it's an unbalanced provision and it all falls on the shoulders of the government to bear that cost then that takes away from other that that discourages governments from making those requirements and also to the extent it does it takes money away from other social programs okay are you this is Motor Co let me just add very very quickly so Beatrice is absolutely right that gender is a question of inclusivity and there are both benefits excuse me the the risk element and the opportunity element so the risks are is the failure of the project to control for example sexual violence against women and children by Labour's and construction camps for example it's a subject of the World Bank's inspection panel investigation or lack of safety in transportation that results in women being endangered in trains and buses right so those are risks that are associated with projects that there are also reputational risks on the other hand if a transportation plan does not adequately take into account the transportation patterns of women which is totally different from men's then women may not end up utilizing that transportation as much which is actually a bottom-line issue that the project may end up having less revenue because women are staying away from using public transport and so there both benefit risks and and opportunities issues that must be addressed and Genesis absolutely right that this needs to be addressed at the feasibility study level at the project design level at the environment on social impact assessment level and also in contracts so it should be addressed throughout the lifecycle of the project thank you thanks Marco those issues or the issue of gender there for a minute I do want to come back on the capacity issue and then I get going to come to two out of the three questions that we have on the chat now and then the third question come back to after inter Beatrice I totally understand and a hundred percent agree with your your comments in terms of government capacity issues one of the concerns though that we have and one of the reasons for hosting this webinar is that some of the key institutions that are in theory at least helping to try to fill that gap that capacity gap for developing country governments institutions like unser trial the UN with their model contractor model laws PETA and critically the World Bank model contract clauses they're supposed to help fill those gaps and there's no lack of capacity in those organizations yep what they are producing as we've talked about earlier is very very skewed in and of itself it lacks balance it lacks a reflection of sustainable development they lack a clear understanding in many cases of the very kinds of capacities governments need so I think the issue in a sense is is multiplied because of that you have the lack of capacity by many of the African and other developing countries and those institutions that are supposed to help fill that gap are doing so in a largely imbalanced way now making it even more difficult for developing country governments to be able to respond to contract proposals or other initiatives other negotiating contacts so I think it's I totally agree with you but the problem actually is multiplied now I think and with that I wanted to just go to the two other questions for this issue one by Maria Clerval who asks I would like to know if there are key spaces where civil society could advocate for more transparent PPP's and PPP negotiating processes both at the regional level or globally so that's the first one and a related question one of the problems about this is understanding the language all the documents training information are in English what can we do about that so those two questions that relate to inputs engagement and so on and and transparency in the process maybe Janice you could start with that and then we'll go to Beatrice okay I think Beatrice and butter Co are better to speak to the key spaces where civil society could advocate but as far as exactly what what groups are out there and what would be more effective because both of them weren't much more on the regional level than I do as far as the language issue sorry I don't mean to sound so cynical but as far as the worldbank guidance I'm not even sure other than these three new provisions that were added to the most recent version I'm not even sure the document merits being translated into other languages but I I would say that I would imagine that some of the documents that are in the cloud and that have been referenced in our discussion today do exist in more than just English to the extent they're being put out by organizations like the United Nations or like the World Bank but I would say perhaps an insistence on on on these organizations putting their documents into other languages or assistance from the the governments themselves if if there are internal translators I'm sorry that may sound lovers may have better ideas about how the documents should and could be put into the the local language instead of just English okay thanks Janice Beatrice bliss canoe has this me repeat the question again I guess there are two questions I would like to know if there are key spaces where civil society could advocate for more transparent PPP's in PPP negotiating processes both at the regional level or globally so that's one question and the second one concerned the fact that the documents are generally international documents are generally only available in English is there anything that can be done to improve that situation make them available in more languages thank you for stepping in to clarify out start with the last one I trust translating these documents to local languages in my view might distort the what you want to put across because there's certain words in PPP's that you may not actually be able to translate directly to the language you want to translate and in the process you might distort the what you want to put across for example if you're talking about a partial risk guarantee I don't know how you'll put the batteries guarantee like in my in my language I don't know what what is equivalent to a fashion risk guarantee or in Chinese I don't know if you talk about viability gap funding if you talk about blended financing if you're talking about the financing structure if you go into a force majeure I don't know in my view we had a discussion like this before in my view if we try to translate some of this PPP like a legal document or a feasibility study a feasibility study that has been translated is likely to mean something else than the actual facility study that's my view from where I sit when you go into the civil society this pieces they can fit in PPP maybe disclosure or preparation is a lot because he was society I believe in the PPP space just like the space they play in in other in other for us they have a role to play if you look at Adam owns it when they're conceiving a project sometimes in my government or in other African governments and the project is not conceived in a systematic way or in a way that you expect the project to be conceived so a civil society can come in and say but I think there's something that is missing in this space why don't you do XYZ as the law because they have access to the law they are accessible policy they should be informed first of all they should be informed and they should have capacity to understand what the process of conceiving a PPP project or the possible the PPP process after the end to financial close to implementation and everything and if they understand the process then they can always interject at whatever stage a that feasibility study or at the time of procurement because sometimes that's where their problems at the time of procurement you find that maybe not the right a private sector hazard into it has not been selected so the civil society at that point should be able to understand Oh if somebody's supposed to be appointed what must that person have oh if somebody is supposed to be a key player in maybe the road construction or in the hydropower plant construction what are the requirements so they must know the requirement such that they can raise their voices voices at the right time and they also raise the right questions because it's not good to just make noise when you don't actually know why you're making noise for but if you if they know what they what is required at each stage at its face they would be very useful instruments especially in loading up some of the anomalies if it is from the private sector point of view they can raise it if it is the World Bank a guidance material or if to the World Bank or truck sure closes if it is a PPP maybe a feasibility study guidance that has been given or it is a project facilitation fund maybe the fund has not been used to fund a specific project which could have been brought vanish the government if the civil society is informed on what projects should be done as a PPP or what is involved in a feasibility study I believe they would have a lot of a value addition in this process because all the issues we are raising you're mentioning about the skewed PPP I mean contractual clauses they focus on Bank ability and all these things why they continue persisting like that is because the civil society does not understand these aspects of possibility and when to raise these questions because the moment they raise these questions you find that most often both the government the private sector players and whatever institution where that is World Bank IFC whatever age they all stop whatever they are doing and they wa t to listen to what the civil society is saying so it goes back to what I was saying is capacity capacity both in government capacity in the private sector capacity for the civil society to understand what goes around in the PPP space and that's what I would say thank you very much because I think that's that's a very comprehensive approach to to a number of the issues the last question that we have and we have just about two or three minutes left in our time here I'll last specifically to Mota Co this goes back to a number of issues of business and human rights business conduct generally the question is from Mehrdad Assad poor to what extent can CSR corporate social responsibility be helpful in respect of investor obligations in PPP contracts is it enough let me just embellish the question a little bit if I may is it enough to just reference CSR or corporate social responsibility do we need to go beyond that and have specific obligations is it enough just to rely on domestic law as it is at any given time how do we treat that issue in terms of ensuring appropriate investor obligations so I'll put that one to you more to go and if you can take perhaps it at most two minutes and then I'll give each panelist one more minute for a final comment and we'll wrap up some multi-code please sorry I was on mute thank you for that very interesting question verdad I think it could be a subject of a book so I'm not sure that I can really summarize this in two minutes except to say in infrastructure when private sector is participating in infrastructure financing and operation basically that private sector company is taking on a traditionally public sector responsibility and so they're in I think lies the problem and also a distinction between the infrastructure say and the extractive sector so I think that just first of all relying or or counting on the private partner to exercise their CSR program in the infrastructure context I don't think is enough I think ideally Dow detailed outcomes of the environmental-social Human Rights climate whatever impact assessment should summarize what the private sector obligation should be and that should be covenant 'add appropriately in the PPP contract and how he also asked is compliance with domestic law enough or compliance with certain international standards enough I I think that that will depend on country law the international standards but ideally the situation should demand a very comprehensive review of available standards as well as international law a lot of these issues are already addressed in international law and some are appropriate for the private sector and so that the parties should really spend a lot of time thinking about their rights and obligations that should be reflected in the PPP contract taking into account this is a an endeavor to provide public service thank you Thank You Marco so it's an excellent summary let me just add to that in one of the earliest arbitrations relating to infrastructure one of the earliest international arbitrations was against Tanzania following the privatization of the water system in Dar and in the arbitration award it was noted that the company itself in that case by water golf accommodation a joint venture between German and British companies they on their website had said that they were providing a public service relating to an essential human right in other words they were in the provision of ensuring human rights are achieved and that was actually taken into account by the tribunal itself in terms of the standard of care the company had to commit to and in this case didn't achieve so these these issues are relevant as we go forward and there is a place for them in both the contracts and in subsequent disputes Charles has sent Charles affect you hi Charles has sent a comment people from the project is the post of benefit deserve to understand it in their language this is about the language of translation arguing basically that there needs to be more functionality and language and I think there's two issues here one is translating the documents into English sorry from English into French and Spanish and Portuguese in other words other principle languages which we still don't have in most cases and then the issue of local languages and there I think Charles main point oh we need to close Charles so forgive me for summarizing I think Charles main point is if we want to have engagement from local communities the documentation has to be in language they can understand and I think that's a very important point even if it's imperfect it's better to have at least some useful communication in the local languages then then none so that that I think is Charles point with that I'll go back to Janice if you have one more closing comment please and then give the final word to Beatrice Janice I guess my closing comment would be with regard to PPP's is for civil society and governments to look for opportunities to get people in to do training or to hire because this really runs to Beatrice as many excellent comments about capacity to really ferret out opportunities for training long and short term training on PPP's the whole process of contracting and the macro impact as well as the micro impact of PPP's I don't think there's any substitute for it and and sharing of that information and technology technology transfer I think would be enormous lis possible important to making the whole world of universe of PPP's a more viable one thank you very much and finally Beatrice one final minute thank you so much first of all I appreciate you for thinking about me and inviting me for this very wonderful and insightful discussion and I am honored and privileged to be part of the panel and I just to give my final remarks I thank you for those insights especially the obvious skewed legal documents that Norma let me see in our countries but you know when you even something by the World Bank you sometimes you can't do anything from one from one side you know that the document is not good but on your own you can do much I just want to share with you that at the UN ECE we came up with what we call the people first principles in support of the UN sustainable development goals and the intention of these people first principles as the word mentions is as we do infrastructure projects we must focus on people fast we are saying that listen to the people what do the people want in terms of infrastructure and all the issues you have been mentioning and the agreements who is skewed to one party or not so we need to make sure that the people are involved and then also we should do smaller projects that basically can be used also by day by day by the poor because most of these big projects are in urban areas that normally before people do not do not have access to and the other one is do risk the projects and make sure that the projects have minimal risk as much as possible but then it comes back to transparency and disclosure both for the private party and both for the government and so that everybody knows what is going on inside there we have a lot to talk in peace but I think in my summary words just to thank you for considering me as one of the panelists for this event and I look forward to future engagements in these discussions around TPP's and also would like to invite you all to capella in September to attend a high-level event and bring those discussions now in Kampala and we can have a very vibrant discussion on what we have done today in Kampala 16 is to 18th of September Kampala is a place to be you all welcome thank you so much Beatrice I think that's a great way to to end the discussion today noting that there are opportunities for follow-up and and certainly on behalf of ISD we will be engaging with you and on that map meeting that very very important meeting with with Janis and others at fully hawai again multiple of course to all of you who have participated thank you so much for spending taking your time to do so and the video will be available before long and the PowerPoint will also be available for everybody before it too long so thank you to everyone have a good rest of your day and we look forward to having another opportunity to to speak to you about these critical issues thank you very much everyone thank you Tom thank you thank you