Minister To Form Public Private Partnership Unit

Jakarta, Nov 15 (Antara) - The Ministry of Finance will form a Public Private Partnership (PPP) Unit to support the acceleration of infrastructure development with a Government and Private partnership plan. "The Ministry of Finance welcomed the launch of the Infrastructure Projects Lists Plan Book. We will establish a unit in charge of ensuring the support for implementation of the infrastructure projects in the PPP scheme," said Director General of Debt Management, Ministry of Finance, Robert Pakpahan here Friday. He added that the PPP Unit`s responsibilities will also include evaluating the current support provided on a number of infrastructure projects in the PPP scheme. "This certainly needs cooperation with other agencies, especially the Ministry of National Development Planning (Bappenas), Coordinating Economic Ministry and others," said Robert. The support for infrastructure development by the government is part of the establishment of the Indonesia Infrastructure Guarantee Fund (IIGF) with the purpose of increasing the credit worthiness of PPP infrastructure projects through offering guarantees for infrastructure risks. The Government also provides a project development facility (PDF) or project preparation facility that is the government`s support to be implemented as part of the PPP program. The government also provides support through the viability gap fund (VGF) in the form of financial contributions. VGF support is given as cash to companies in order to improve project financial feasibilities to attract private funding. In the 2013 State Budget, the government has allocated Rp341 billion in VGF funds for PPP projects.