Soaring investment in PPP transport projects fails to meet needs

Investment in public-private-partnership (PPP) projects in China’s transport sector is expected to top 100 trillion yuan ($15 trillion) during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20), experts said during a recent forum on the investment and finance sector.

“Since the country began its massive reforms in the PPP sector in 2014, the first batch of pivotal investment projects were launched last year, and projects lining up for the authorities’ ratification have surged significantly,” said Lu Shangting, deputy head of the accounting and auditing department at the Ministry of Transport, said at the recently concluded 2016 Transport Infrastructure Investment and Financing Forum. Statistics indicated that since the beginning of last year to April 2016, projects waiting to be approved by the Ministry of Finance and the National Development and Reform Commission reached 16 trillion yuan, sources revealed during the forum sponsored by the China Academy of Transport Sciences.

Statistics also showed that until this April, the investment to boost infrastructure construction in the sector hit 4.5 trillion yuan, covering 11 urgent projects in eight provinces.

Mo Xiaolong, deputy head of the Government and Social Cooperation Center under the Ministry of Finance, said: “The moves are due to the country’s strong support of PPP methods to mobilize social capital. However more innovative methods are critically needed to break the bottleneck and lure more social capital.”

His comment is backed by the Ministry of Transport’s capital-raising plans. Compared with the large investment requirements, the ministry’s planned investment from 2016 to 2018 in the transport sector — covering 303 projects in railways, roads, waterways, airports and city rail — is only 4.7 trillion yuan.

Echoing Mo, Wang Shouqing, an expert with the PPP research center, under Tsinghua University, noted: “The ever stronger private sector is advised to explore the ample potential in the sector in a bid to lessen the pressure on governments to provide capital.”

Han Zhifeng, deputy head of the investment department under the National Development and Reform Commission, urged more innovation in collection of road tolls in relatively undeveloped regions of western China so that investment could generate faster returns where social capital is low.

During the forum, a research report jointly produced by the China Academy of Transport Sciences and Ping’an Bank, was released. It was the first report of its kind into the country’s road infrastructure PPP sector since the nation began its massive reforms in 2014.

Ping’an Bank, an arm of China’s largest insurer, Ping’an, has taken the lead in the sector by budgeting 40 billion yuan to support a range of projects and is looking for more partners in the field, said Luo Zheng, president of the bank’s transport finance department.