Welcome

This third annual event is to be held December 15–18, 2008 in Washington, D.C. It features an agendabased on specific current interests and needs expressed by the membership of the Global PPPI Network. It also reflects an emerging consensus that knowledge sharing and capacity building to support PPPI requires greater harmonization, coordination, and alignment of multilateral agencies with focused PPP capacity building programs and working with private sector sources of PPPI knowledge and practice.

What is new for the 2008 event?

• An optional one-day event on December 15, will serve as prelude to the main event. For those invited officials and executives who are interested, this one-day PPP Workshop is designed to serve as a introduction to key concepts in public-private partnerships (PPP), to improve understanding of basic elements of an enabling legislative and fiscal framework for PPP, and a review of best practices.

• Focus on the latest issues in the global PPPI market and PPPI policies: Leading practitioners and researchers in PPPI will present and discuss findings from current PPPI practice and research. This constitutes the core of the conference as in previous years and will take place December 16–17.

• Discuss the future evolution, shape and role of the existing Global PPPI Network: The last panel on December 17, is aimed at developing future directions for the Global PPPI Network. The discussion will enable the network to play a more effective role in knowledge sharing among PPP units or similarly mandated agencies worldwide, and will help develop multilateral capacity building initiatives and private sector PPP associations. The starting point for the discussion is to tackle the real capacity building and knowledge- sharing needs of the PPPI community in the public sector in developing countries. Participants from 4–5 countries from several regions will be sought to volunteer to kick off this discussion.

• Multilateral capacity building institutions and private sector forum: For the first time, the conference will feature a one-day event on December 18, devoted to the roles which can be played by multilateral capacity building agencies as well as private sector associations. A private sector roundtable will feature private sector practitioners with global perspectives on all elements of private sector involvement in PPPI including debt and equity financing, advisory services, and rating of PPP projects.