Introduction

iii User fee Public Private Partnership Under this method, planning, implementation, financing and maintenance of certain infrastructural assets owned by the state agencies are assigned to a private party. This can be used for upgrading or widening of such assets.  Under this process, certain project or an asset is assigned to a private party for a specific period ie, 25 or 30 years under a concessionary agreement and after the expiry of given period, it is vested back with the government. This type of methods is carried out under the BOT (Built, Operate and Transfer) or DBFO (Design, Built and Finance) approaches. During a given period, the capital cost connected to the project or asset, maintenance cost and profits are recovered through user fees. Collection of toll from Highways can be given as a good example. Two major issues to be faced with this type of partnership approach are the risk of having a good demand and affordability of the users. Since the investors are more concerned about these two factors, the government should provide cost subsidy byway sharing a part of service charge or purchasing of such services as a practical remedy. However, it is important that the government should monitor or regulate those aspects to ensure that quality of the service, price and service conditions are favorable to end users.  In many countries, the express ways, railway service, urban transport, port activities, airport services, power supply, drinking water supply in urban areas and communication services etc. are carried out through Public-Private Partnership approach (BOO, BOT and DBFO)