Updates to the UNCITRAL Legislative Guide on Privately Financed Infrastructure Projects

CCSI, jointly with The Observatory for Sustainable Infrastructure, submitted comments to the UNCITRAL Secretariat regarding updates to the UNCITRAL Legislative Guide on Privately Financed Infrastructure Projects. CCSI’s comments focused on the need for an updated guide, which will now refer to Public Private Partnerships, to holistically and systematically incorporate considerations of: (1) sustainable development and the SDGs, (2) rebalancing of the public versus private nature of PPPs, (3) transparency, participation, accountability, and remedy, (4) empirical evidence-based assessments of contexts in which PPPs may be desirable, (5) objectives of investment and PPPs, (6) human rights, (7) labor, (8) climate change, (9) environment, (10) sovereign debt and fiscal burden, (11) tax, (12) updates to norms on dispute resolution, and (13) updates to norms on stabilization of laws. CCSI calls for an updated Legislative Guide that can help to guide the implementation of legislative frameworks that are focused on sustainable investment and the promotion of infrastructure in support of the SDGs.

Our blog, UNCITRAL’s PPP Legislative Guide Must be Fit for Today’s PPPs, more succinctly states the reasons why sustainability criteria are critical in any legislative guide intended for use by governments.