Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Public-Privateer Partnerships




One often hears of Public Private Partnerships (PPP), as if the public sector and the private sector get together and do something that is of mutual benefit, but that's far from the truth. Any PPPs I've come across involve the public sector handing over large sums of money to private sector enterprises and getting nothing in return but demands for even larger sums of money. At the same time,the public sector still has to pump additional public money into the services that they were, ostensibly, paying the private sector to provide.

Well the World Bank has always been very keen on PPPs. They give loans to desperate governments with certain conditions attached and those conditions often include the privatization of things like public utilities, for example, water. This happened in Tanzania with a company called Biwater. They screwed up so badly in the UK that the World Bank felt they could make an even bigger mess in developing countries, which they obligingly did.

They and other wealthy operators continue to asset strip, steal, threaten, maim and kill in various ways in other countries. And with generous handouts from the World Bank in addition to what they can extort from the most impoverished people on earth, they will probably continue to do so for many years to come. Sphere: Related Content

1 comment:

  1. Interesting article on PPPs in the US:
    http://informationclearinghouse.info/article23192.htm

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