Government and PPP: Ramesh Shrestha

Relationship for mutual benefit

There exists a close relationship between the general public and government beyond paying taxes and receiving services in return - governments as custodian of its people fulfilling its social contract responsibilities.

Engagement of individuals and the private sector with the government is one such relationship which can assist in achieving all national objectives with a tacit recognition of the fact that governments alone cannot provide all services and solve all problems on their own. This is also the basics of collaboration between the government and private sector often described as public-private partnership (PPP). This partnership can be complex as it involves politics, economy and social issues. The decisive factor is whether or not the government is able to maintain its oversight function with robust regulatory structure and make the private sector partners accountable for the delivery of stated public goods and services in the interest of the citizens to ensure that profit would not override the quality and quantity of services.

The idea of PPP regained traction as a tool for development during the 1990s. There are numerous positive examples of this partnership such as infrastructure development, reliable water supply network, efficient transportation, etc. There are even cases of private prisons and defence contractors in few countries; these are of special significance as it involves national security and issues of accountability with regards to human rights violations and impunity. With the gradual expansion of the private sector as an integral part of the free-market economy there is a steady takeover of many public services by the private sector entities, small & large as the private sector is considered less bureaucratic and efficient in delivering results. But the cost of this partnership is escalating as the profit interest of the private sector is overriding the services to be delivered to the public. 

Time to assess

Public sector and the private sector have a common objective of providing services to the general public but with different motives; it is service vs profit. The argument is not against the role of the private sector as it contributes to good quality services, expands job creation, gains efficiency, creates competition with innovation and so on. Again, profit in itself is not a problem as no one offers free service, but when there is no limit to profit it becomes an issue of affordability for the majority, which becomes an obstacle in fulfilling government's commitment of accountability to the public. This becomes an issue especially in providing balanced information, equal opportunity for education and a well-regulated health care to the general public. It is of special significance as well informed, educated and healthy citizens are the prime asset of a country. We have come a long way on the public-private partnership compact; it is perhaps time to assess and take corrective measures in certain aspects of the partnership where necessary, especially in controlling cost of service.   

Making public informed

Right to information is built in the constitution of perhaps all UN member states. But what if the information is manipulated? International media and local media are all managed by a handful of media barons with tight editorial control. All in all, local as well as international events that make news are aimed at promoting the views of select groups of elitists, which shields people from the reality. The relationship between the media and political parties have become a hidden compact in deciding the news content. The reality is as if the media owns the political parties or the political parties own the media. Diverse small and large open print media that existed decades ago have been relegated to the history books. The exponential growth in digital news portals with unverified and manipulated contents is another attack on the public's access to truthful news. It is getting worse with algorithm-based news and views deprived of souls that pop up without warning. The boundary between news and opinion is totally blurred both in social media and privately owned media. Uninformed public is perhaps better than disinformed or misinformed informed public.

According to a recent report published by OpenAI (28 Nov 2025), between 21 to 30+ percent of social media content is created by using AI. It means there is no human analysis by using the actual brain in creating news contents. Unfortunately, the AI generated materials have also become a big part of scientific articles (same study). Many of these AI generated products were described as 'brain rot' materials by the author. Modern media is crushing people's culture, and may kill civilisation itself with marginalization of people's independent thinking as people are kept busy with an unlimited quantity of trashy materials in online portals. How much and for how long people can and should remain optimistic believing that AI will solve all our miseries?

Education and Health services

The economic power of the private sector has captured the government's regulatory policy on health and education sectors among other sectors. As a result, the private sector has managed to operate education and health services like profit making industry rather than as essential public services. The result is creation of a parallel system - one for the poor and one for the rich; one is under the control of the government, which is often cheaper with acceptable to questionable quality and the second one provided by the private sector which is expensive but provides good quality services.

There is general understanding that private sector investment brings in advanced technology, up-to-date teaching learning materials, creates people friendly ambiance and pays their staff higher to retain good quality services. In government institutions the budget for the sector is just about enough to maintain the staff with limited budget leftover for remaining needs. For example, curriculum in private schools is kept up-to-date and in health services too new technology and staff training are regularly updated. These costs are recuperated by billing the customers – in this case students and patients. It is not the problem; the problem is the inflated cost to boost profit for the shareholders.

On the contrary the government is always in cost cutting mode to balance the budget or to skim budget from social sectors to supplement say defence budget or budget for infrastructure. The question is, what is stopping the government from learning from the works of the private sector to provide the same quality of services, such as management practices? Same goes for adopting new ideas and technology to improve services. The two important areas where the government may find difficult to compete with the private sector is its human resource rulebooks and staff remuneration; but these are all man made, which can be changed when needed by those who made them. In many low- and mid-income countries government jobs are 'for life'. It would be extremely difficult to change but the staff can be encouraged to deliver by improving service delivery environments such as with new technology and frequent on the job training as part of professional development. The government could increase the cost of services and recoup the cost from the students and patients, without making a profit.

What next

The gap between government and private sector services needs to be minimised. For this to happen there is a need for governments to review the actual cost of service in the private sector and the profit margins that are being charged for the services to ensure that the majority of the people can have access to private services not available in government institutions. Meanwhile governments must improve its services by adopting management practices and working modalities of private sectors.

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Or contact Ramesh at ramesh.chauni@gmail.com