Ingeniero

Jean-Marc Mirailles (IHS’ Master student)

Introduction
Historically, despite the strong control and economic influence of the state, France has a tradition in concessions involving private partners since almost two hundred years. In spite of the devolution of the precursory private concessions such as railways to the state during the first part of twentieth century, a return to more privateinvolvement in financing projects has been experienced at the end of the 1960s, when the French highways network has been modernized (Barjot 2011, pp. 782-783). The trend has been increasing in the 1990s with the systematic involvement of private group in delivering some specific services such as power supply, water supply and treatment, waste management etc.). In this paper, we will discuss aboutthe opportunities still offered nowadays by Public-Private Parnerships (PPPs) to public decision-makers. Firstly, a broad definition of PPPs will be provided. Afterwards, we will argue about the current involvement of private sector within public services delivery in Corsica and, then, about the possibility to increase that participation. This will naturally lead us to focus on the developmentplan of the Trade Port of Ajaccio, the current flagship project of the regional authority (“CTC”).

Public - Private Partnerships, concept statement
These days, the public authorities could not ignore the existence of PPPs as a “new” tool for urban management, this due to the high and positive coverage they have benefited those last decades. Indeed, the factors which explain such a raisinginterest are for most of them in relation with the economical and global trends currently in action all around the world: globalization process, setting of market economy as a worldwide standard, decentralization processes etc. From the public authorities point of view, the main concern when considering the possibility for a PPP will be to bring some alternatives to capture private funding and/or to takeadvantages from the efficiency of the private sector (European Commission 2003, p. 13). Obviously, it shall not be forgotten that the private involvement will always be driven by the economic viability of the project. Allocating the roles and responsibilities in function of the capacities and, above all, in function of particular interests is the way to tie together partners in a PPP. Having saidthat there is a “broad range of options for involving the private sector in the financing, physical development, and operation of transport and environment projects traditionally the domain of the public sector” (European Commission 2003, p. 13). Since the subject of this paper is not to give a comprehensive overview of the numerous procurement options which exist for a PPP, we will rather gothrough a short review while considering the case of Corsica island.

Region of Corsica, challenges for an increased involvement of private sector
In the case of Corsica, and by extension in the case of France, one could legitimately wonder whether or not there are still some possibilities for increasing the private participation in public services delivery. As a starting point for furtherdiscussion, the table 1 provides a review of the institutional allocation of public services on the island. Accordingly to the table, it appears non surprisingly that the services which present a strong market potential are already managed through PPPs. It is noteworthy that those services show some distinguishable private goods characteristics: they are both consumable and divisible, and their useimplies few economic externalities. On the other hand, it appears that public goods services (nonconsumable and non-divisible) and merit goods services (health, education, sport facilities) are directly managed by governmental agencies.

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Jean-Marc Mirailles (IHS’ Master student)

Table 1. Services delivery in Corsica

In the meanwhile, if it comes to light that there is limited margin for...