A social infrastructure PPP involves a consortium of investors and a government agreeing that:
- the consortium will design, construct, operate and maintain some public infrastructure
- the consortium will obtain the financing for that infrastructure
- the government will pay the consortium for the infrastructure, plus a return, over a certain period.
Examples of the type of infrastructure that may be subject to this arrangement include schools, hospitals, prisons, roads and public utilities.
Social infrastructure PPPs are different to ‘economic’ PPPs, which involve user fees (for example, tolls or fares) being used to repay a consortium’s cost of construction and financing (rather than payments from a government).