DEO-Day 2004: Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) – The best way to provide energy for the poor?

This year‘s discussion focused on the concept of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) regarding energy supply for the poor in relation to Dutch sustainable development policy. PPPs are a relatively new but eagerly adopted concept in the realm of development co-operation. PPPs refer to the collaboration between public entities and private companies to realise public projects and objectives

For this year‘s DEO-day the policy of the Dutch Ministry of International Co-operation (DGIS) will serve as a framework for the lectures and discussions. In the DGIS document ‘Bridging the Energy Gap’, an outline of Dutch development goals is stated in relation to the World Summit on Sustainable Development. In this context, the Dutch support aims at providing affordable and reliable energy services to 10 million poor people by 2015. PPPs are envisioned as an important instrument to achieve this goal.

Programme
The DEO-day aims to contribute to the discussion on PPP’s from a neutral, a critical and a positive angle. It is an all day event with a morning programme that starts with an introduction on the opportunities and bottlenecks surrounding PPPs. The morning programme will start with an introduction on the opportunities and bottlenecks surrounding PPPs. This will be followed by presentations from three speakers looking at PPPs from different angles. Each presentation will allow for short discussions afterwards. In the afternoon the participants will be divided into three parallel workshops representing the ‘public’, ‘private’ and ‘civil’ groups. At the end of this meeting, the results will be discussed in a final forum. Of course lunch is not forgotten and those who are tired of discussing or those who cannot get enough of it, are all invited to have a drink afterwards. (more detailed day programme will follow)

For a summary report of the 2004 DEO day, click here