Along with awareness raising, numerous workshops, seminars, focus group discussions, talk programmes, policy debates and orientation programmes have been held with municipalities, CCI staff including representatives of civil society in partner municipalities. This has helped in the capacity development of stakeholders in the concerned areas regarding the PPP concept in Nepal.

The various training programmes conducted (lasting from one to 21 days) for government staff, private sector and community members, covered subjects like public relations, negotiation and leadership, proposal development and project financial analysis in order to build the capacity of the stakeholders from a PPP perspective both at the central and local levels.

Representatives of stakeholders were also taken on exposure visits to international practices in PPP in countries in this region (India, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand) which increased their practical understanding of PPP. Inter-municipality visits to observe PPP initiatives and encourage replication have also been effective for gaining on the ground knowledge of PPP. These visits have been organized both centrally by the PPPUE Project Management Office as well as individual municipalities.

Present capacity development needs

With the gradual adoption of PPP as a key approach for rapid economic development in Nepal and the usefulness of PPP in public infrastructure and service delivery, some of the challenges ahead are in the proper development of PPP projects and finding the financing for them. As part of the solution, PPPUE has stressed capacity building for relevant government personnel in project development and management and for staff of financial institutions of Nepal in project financing skills. The Institute of Public Private Partnerships (IP3) of Washington D.C., USA and the Infrastructure Development Finance Company Limited (IDFC) of the India PPP Capacity Building Trust have provided various trainings related to PPP project implementation in the areas stated above.

PPPUE will continue to assist in the capacity development of various personnel. Staff from designated ministries will be trained in various aspects of project development and management. In local level projects, the Town Development Fund will be strengthened to provide financing support to municipal PPP initiatives.

Human Resources Development in PPP

PPPUE has adopted a long-term policy of popularizing and enhancing PPP knowledge and subsequently developing human resources by partnering with national academic institutions like the Local Development Training Academy (LDTA), National Administrative Staff College (NASC), the Institute of Engineering (IoE) – Tribhuvan University, Pokhara University and the National Judicial Academy (NJA). The NJA has been instrumental in acquainting Nepal’s judiciary sector - judges, attorneys and private law practitioners - with PPP.

Apart from providing training packages for different target groups, LDTA and NASC have included PPP in their standard training curricula. Similarly, the IoE offers PPP for credit in its MSc in Urban Planning course. Another important achievement in human resource development is the training of local PPP focal points of partner municipalities as resource persons for local PPP training activities.

A PPP resource centre has been established with PPP related books, reports, magazines and other reference materials open to all PPP practitioners, researchers, students and others at the project management office in Kathmandu. Similar resource centres are planned in selected partner municipalities.