The Development Academy of the Philippines Center for Governance (CfG), through its Local Governance and Development Office, has conducted the first run of the Introductory Course on Public-Private Partnership (PPP) for LGUs, gathering local officials and key representatives from different local government units for the publicly offered course that took place at the DAP Conference Center in Pasig City earlier in the fourth quarter of this year.

Palawan Vice Governor Victorino Dennis Socrates and Tiwi, Albay Mayor Jaime Villanueva were among the 25 participants who were oriented on the Philippines’ PPP program and processes and trained on how to develop a project concept note for a PPP project.

Participating LGUs

Other participating LGUs came from the provinces of Cebu, Negros Occidental, Nueva Ecija, Quezon, and Siquijor; the cities of Muntinlupa, Santa Rosa in Laguna, Sagay in Negros Occidental, and Iloilo; and the municipality of Garcia-Hernandez in Bohol.

Program management officers from a private company, Maynilad Water Services Inc., also joined the course run.

Participants in the course engaged in discussion and group exercises to better understand their roles and possible benefits from PPP as well as the key steps that they need to undertake from conceptualizing a PPP project till its implementation.

Developing a potential project

The participants were also guided on how to develop a potential local project for PPP in the form of a project concept note, which they later presented to a panel of experts from the PPP Center and the DAP CfG.  The potential PPP projects presented by the participants included a local public market, a provincial hospital, a mini hydro-power facility, a pedestrian and bike lane-furnished green park, and a waste reduction facility.

The course is the first public offering of the DAP on PPP after forging a memorandum of understanding with the PPP Center as one of its institutional partners in providing capacity-building interventions to LGUs.