Report from the Pre-Conference Meeting of the PPP Advisory Panel
Vienna Hotel InterContinental, 23rd of April 2008

Following the tradition of the Jacob Fleming pre-conference discussion meetings our PPP Advisory Panel. Led by the moderator of the evening Mr. Peter Snelson of Atkins our 9 experts on PPP from construction, legal and advisory industry met in the late afternoon on the 23rd of April 2008 in order to discuss the current PPP market situation in the region of CEE and SEE.

Jacob Fleming Conferences is a young rapidly growing company. With more than four year experience with organizing a PPP in CEE conference we feel it to be a natural step to be closer to our clients and to provide them with an additional networking activity such as the pre-conference discussion meetings.

Beginning the discussion the panelists were invited to share their view on the PPP market situation in the region. Mr. Jaap Veenenbos of AON Risk Consulting highlighted the Baltic countries as a rather small market active predominately in projects on social infrastructure such as schools but also on road projects. Polish A1 road project is currently discussed a lot and raises many expectations. However there are voices calling to avoid the rather negative experience with Czech PPPs. Here favorable PPP environment was first created and seven pilot projects were announced, still the process of the actual realizing of a project is far too complicated and the public procurement lacks transparency. The need for fighting corruption in choosing the bidder was mentioned as one of the major obstacles also during the plenary session in the course of the following two days.

Poland has also made several steps towards promoting PPP platform. The country introduces PPP legislation back in 2005 yet no project has been started as there are currently four conflicting pieces of legislations that may apply to PPP. Plus extra legislation was created for the EURO 2012.

Both in Czech Republic and Poland the most crucial driver of successful PPPs would be strong political determination and minimization of bureaucracy. Another pain point might be linked to the political openness to PPPs. At the moment some countries are still heavily relying on EU funds when financing transport infrastructure. Here it is necessary to perceive PPP as a complementary way of project financing rather than competing forms.

Yet in Poland things seem to change soon. New government is bringing new, more PPP friendly climate. Cities such as Warsaw and Gdansk bring the first signals.

On the other hand, Slovakia with its first PPP packages of road projects D1 and R1 might be smaller in the volume of investments; nevertheless here the key driver is especially strong political will to endorse PPP platform. Traditionally, Hungary was highlighted several times as an example to be followed.

Further in the south, the Balkans has a flow of projects in the pipeline and raises high expectations. Experts say this region is currently in a similar stage as CEE was about five years ago.

Finally, Turkey faces different regulations under different laws and misses a clear legal environment facilitating the PPPs in the region. The prime is most certainly in the energy sector. Another interesting sector and open for PPP is also health care and IT as well as transport, of course.

The Pre-Conference Discussion was attended by:

• Peter Snelson, Atkins, Director, PPP Consultancy Project Development, UK
• Marcel Babczynski, Erste Corporate Finance, Director, Czech Republic
• Muge Tuna, Garanti Securities, Senior Vice President, Turkey
• Marcos Perez-Diaz, EGIS Projects, Business Development Manager, France
• John D. Crothers, Gide Loyrette Nouel, Partner, France
• Jaap Veenenbos, AON, Regional Director Risk Consulting, Central Eastern Europe, The Netherlands
• Jarek Dabrowski, Deloitte, Financial Advisory Assistant Director, Poland
• Rolf-Roger Hoeppner, erha consulting group, Germany / DFPP, CEO / Chairman
• Elan Cusiac-Barr, KPMG, Associate Director, Global Infrastructure Projects Group, Corporate Finance, UK