Rekindling Public Private Partnership in Indian Road Infrastructure

Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in infrastructure represent a valuable instrument to speed up development and can help to meet the demand and fill the very large funding gap. Developing economies like India adopted PPP at a great rate; but since 2012, the sector witnessed a decline in private investment, particularly in the sphere of Build Operate Transfer (BOT) projects. Therefore, to facilitate the transition back to the PPP adoption, this study identifies various risk factors associated with BOT projects. A semi-structured interview-based approach was adopted to identify the challenges faced in the adoption of BOT projects. A total of twelve interviews were conducted among major stakeholders (i.e., granting authority, concessionaire, and government) associated with the implementation of BOT projects. The collected data were analyzed using a content analysis which yielded 21 risk factors. Further, a second round of interviews was conducted with ten experts and was presented with mitigation measures to overcome the identified risks and were asked to rate them based on their importance level on a scale of 1 to 5. These mitigation measures were then mapped with the identified risks. The findings of this study aim to provide the practitioners with sound knowledge about the challenges and the mitigation measures which can aid the adoption of BOT projects and can lead to the increased private investment in the infrastructure sector in India.