Desirable Conditions to Attract Private Sector Participants for Public-Private Partnerships Implementation in Ethiopian Road Sector

Abstract

Public-private partnerships are increasingly being used as an alternate strategy to the development and funding of public infrastructure services around the world, even though, Ethiopia is still in the early stages of applying public-private partnerships. Public-private partnership is used as one of the tools to improve infrastructure services and gives the opportunity to use the private sector’s potential. This research aims to examine the desirable conditions to attract the private sector for public-private partnership implementation in the Ethiopian road sector. An empirical questionnaire survey was conducted. The relative importance index, mean score ranking, and one-sample T-test were used to analyze the collected data. Financial viability of projects, Political stability, and Political support and acceptability for public-private partnerships are deemed as three major desirable conditions from the results. The results presented in this paper are expected to enlighten practitioners and the government of Ethiopia on the strategic desirable conditions to attract private investments in the public-private partnerships market. The research output and findings contribute to the implementation and the limited knowledge of public-private partnership practices in Ethiopia.