Mark Moseley, the GI Hub’s Senior Director for Legal Frameworks and Procurement Policies, pictured above, gave two presentations at the Asia PPP Practitioners Network (APN) Conference held in Seoul, South Korea, on 30 November – 2 December, 2016.
The tradition of annual APN meetings dates back to 2010, when the first APN event was held under the sponsorship of the Government of Korea – specifically, the Korean Ministry of Strategy and Finance (MOSF) and the Korea Development Institute (KDI) – along with the Asia Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank Group (WBG). The MOSF, KDI, ADB and WBG have continued to be the organizers for each of the APN events held since then.
The 2016 version of the APN event consisted of two days of very interactive presentations, followed by a day of site visits to a pair of interesting PPP projects near Seoul.
The event began with opening and welcoming addresses given, respectively, by Mr Yongman Cho, a Director-General of the MOSF, and Mr Joon-Kyung Kim, the President of the KDI. This was followed by the keynote address given Mark Moseley on behalf of both the GI Hub and the WBG (from which Mark has been seconded to the Hub). This presentation concerned both the GI Hub’s Report on Allocating Risks in PPP Contracts (https://globalinfrastructurehub.org/allocating-risks-in-ppps/ ) and the associated World Bank Report on Recommended PPP Contractual Provisions.
On the second day of the conference, Mark gave a separate presentation on the subject of the renegotiation of PPP transactions, which is a topic that the Hub is proposing to develop more fully in a future Leading Practices initiative.
The formal portion of the program ended on the afternoon of 1 December, with the President of the KDI thanking all the presenters and the participants for making the 2016 Conference a particularly informative event.
On the final day of the event, two site visits took place.
The first visit was to the Shinbundang Project, which is a combined heavy rail/light rail transportation system, featuring driverless trains operated from a management control center, which we had an opportunity to see.
The second visit was to the Yong-In Sewage Treatment Project, sponsored by the Yong-In City Government, located near Seoul. This project involves both a water treatment facility and an associated pipeline, with a 20-year build and operate agreement.
The 2016 APN Conference brought together PPP practitioners from more than 12 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, including both jurisdictions with extensive PPP experience — such as the Philippines, and states that have only recently embarked on their PPP programs — such as Myanmar. The discussions were detailed and enriching, with the participants actively sharing a wide variety of viewpoints and ‘lessons learned’.
At a meeting of the organizers held on the second day of the event, there was a strong consensus that the 2016 Conference had been a very successful one, and there was a commitment to holding this very worthwhile event again in 2017 and thereafter, and to have the Global Infrastructure Hub continue to take an active role in future APN events.
Mark Mosley presenting at the Asia PPP Practitioners Network (APN) Conference