This week I spend a few days in one of my favourite destinations, Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. A beautiful city that manages to elegantly combine its traditional architecture with modern-style buildings and bridges. Great food and wines. And very hospitable. Where do you receive a bottle of wine when passing through immigration? Unfortunately there are only a few direct flights per week, so I was forced to use the evening flights from Turkish Airlines with s stopover in Istanbul so it costed me a broken night both upon arrival and upon departure. Life of a PPP nomad is not always a bed of roses.
The purpose of the mission was to discuss the feedback on the draft PPP Guide as submitted and agree on the way forward with the development of PPP in Georgia. Luckily our counterpart Shota Gunia at the Ministry of Finance was pleased with the work done so dar. Unfortunately the development of PPP has lost some of its momentum. In June of last year, the PPP Program was ambitiously launched by the Prime Minister at the time Mamuka Bakhtadze in a stakeholder conference with different Ministers expressing their commitment to the development of PPP. However, following the resignation of Bakhtadze in September and a few months thereafter also the resignation of the Director of the PPP Agency Alexandre Revia, limited follow up has been given to these ambitions. And no major push is expected in the coming months in anticipation of the elections end of this year. A bit frustrating, but that’s the reality of political dynamics.
This status was also conveyed to ADB’s new country director Shane Rosenthal and we agreed that for the time being we would downsize our engagement becoming more reactive than proactive. It’s a small world. Shane happens to be a contact from the past. We met already in 2007 in Mongolia when I is was reviewing the PPP Law on behalf of the ADB so it was nice the get reacquinted again.
I was in Tbilisi together with Michel Leushuis, a director of Rebelgroup International acting as the International PPP Finance expert on this technical assistance. A most enjoyable experience as it does not often happen that I work with a peer with a similar background and a similar level of experience and expertise. Most of the times I am the senior PPP expert advising government officials on how to do PPP or the project manager consolidating the inputs from different disciplines to an integrated review of a specific project. With Michel I am being challenged in my thinking and receiving relevant suggestions to address certain issues. For the project at hand and also other projects. It was also interesting to discuss the continued successtory of the Rebelgroup. Starting in 2002 with 12 former employees of Ecorys, now a multinational conglomerate of various sector or service specific consulting boutiques with over 200 staff in total. I could have been one of the founding fathers being involved in the initial discussions during my time at Ecorys though I decided to follow a different career path. Maybe not my smartest decision but then again, there are more roads that lead to career fulfilment and personal satisfaction. No regrets.
I also had a meeting this week in The Hague to discuss among others my comments on the Makueni Primary Health Care Initiative with the concerned parties. Including Dr. Mulwa, the Minister of Health in Makueni County, Kenya who had come over for this purpose, the private proponents Philips and Amref and from the Dutch government side FMO which supports the private side and RVO which is considering to support Makueni County. The project includes the modernisation and management of a large number of primary health centers under a PPP arrangement and is already under preparation for the past 3 years. Obviously no one will oppose the improvement of health care services in an impovirished region like Makueni county. However, as this improvement will have financial implications for the county government and the population it has to be clear that these financial implications are affordable and represent value for money. Luckily this was acknowledged by all parties and to be further addressed in the coming period. The private consortium had already retained a PPP advisor for this purpose, John Ponsonby, whom I know from my time as team leader for the transaction advisory services for the Nairobi - Nakuru Road PPP and he was in a similar role for the Mombassa Bridge PPP. I have been asked by RVO to make myself available to support Makueni County in their negotiations with the private consortium. Need to figure out how to fit this in my schedule. To be continued.
The weekend was scheduled for a visit to our long-lasting friends Mario and Mandy in Eindhoven. Our friendship goes back to our teen years and we have been close ever since sharing our up and downs on our paths of life. Because of work and social agendas we don’t see each other as often as we would like though we try to catch up at least several times a year. And then again “good friends are like stars. You don't always see them, but you know they're always there.”
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