Finance and Pensions & Investments Blog

In the transport sector usually involved a public official and one private. Both often provide initial funding, while the holding is in private hands. To adjust the terms of the collaboration, such as revenue sharing, establishing a public-private partnership and signed a contract. The contract stipulates the amount that the dealer’s service, whether port infrastructure, an airport or highway, the transfer to the public official for their investment in construction or dredging.

There are many forms of public-private partnership, each country has its own rules in this regard depending on the sector, and are covered by contracts that can be varied depending on who invests, who exploits and participation rates. In order to assess the effectiveness of these partnerships and bidding processes for the best private partner, European researchers have focused to date on the situation in his country. Now, on the basis of the projects that each one develops, has formed a cooperation network for sharing in order to achieve greater impact of the results.

The University of Valencia Framed participates in this network in a COST Action of the European Commission which seeks to develop a systematic approach to policy and public-private partnership in the European transport sector. Cooperation networks called “COST Actions” are funded under the Framework Programme. In this case, the Action entitled “Public Private Partnerships in Transport: Trends and Theory” has a budget of 84 million euros and will last four years.

Among more than 35 researchers are involved, are Carmen Juan and Fernando Olmos, members of the Institute for International Economics (IIE) and professors in the Faculty of Economics, UV, and Spanish experts in the International Management Committee of the project. Also recently joined the Foundation Committee Valenciaport in the figure of Eva Perez, director of R & D + i in the Area of Transport Economics.

Participating countries are 18 COST countries: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Britain, and 3 countries partners: Australia, Hong Kong (China) and the U.S..

The contribution Valencia

There are large differences between countries. As recalled by Fernando Olmos, in the UK, for example, privatization is a priority in both the construction and exploitation. With this system good (infrastructure) is in private hands. In other countries like ours, however, ports and highways are in private hands for the duration of the concession but later returned to the State.

According to the researcher: “The intention with this project is to share research and experiences made and analyzed to make recommendations to the authorities about what is most convenient when dealing with a contract of this nature, not so much from the terms of state benefits, but the quality of service offered to citizens. ”

The UV brings experience in economic valuation of contracts to ensure an equitable distribution of service benefits, which depend on the initial investment by each partner in civil engineering plus operating costs. “We looked at the financial balance of the concession in terms of risks to each partner to ensure: first, that the public sector to recover the investment, and secondly, to obtain private gains, and that optimum service bid users, “said Olmos.

“This is not as simple to calculate because it estimates the potential number of users but the number is not known with certainty and therefore not known in advance income. Therefore, establishing compensation clauses guaranteeing the concessionaire a minimum amount of income. This is called risk transfer and so we are looking from the UV. ”

Among other activities of this project, we plan to conduct two annual workshops and a final international conference, short stays Action researchers at other universities to create international teams work, a doctoral school, a web portal and monographs on the subject.

20.8% of the population living in Spain is below the relative poverty line, a figure which in 2009 was 19.5%. Also, three out of every 10 households clearly to make ends meet “with difficulty” or “very difficult”. These are the data resulting from the provisional release of CVD INE providing information on household income in 2009.

According to these results, the average net annual cash income per household amounted to 25,732 euros, representing a decrease of 2.9% over the previous year.

On the other hand, 36.7% of households in states with no capacity to handle unforeseen expenses, an increase of 2.7 points compared to 2009, and the average income per person reached 9,627 euros, a 2, 4% below the level recorded the previous year, which was 9,865 euros.

We are increasingly harder to make ends meet this month

In 2010, 30.4% of Spanish households clearly to make ends meet “with difficulty” or “very difficult”. This percentage is slightly lower than in the year 2009 (30.5%), breaking the upward trend of this indicator began in 2007.

“The percentage of households in 2010 does not have capacity to handle unforeseen expenses, experience an increase of 2.7 points over the previous year, reaching 36.7%, the highest value of the last six years,” said a statement INE.

For its part, the percentage of households that can not afford a vacation away from home at least one week a year stands at 39.7%, an increase of 0.8 points compared to 2009.

7.7% of households have late payments at the time of paying expenses related to the main housing (mortgage or rent, gas bills, electricity or community) in the 12 months preceding the interview. This percentage has been increasing over the past six years, from 4.7% of households in 2005 to 7.7% in 2010.

By region, Extremadura (36.2%) and Andalusia (29.3%) had the highest rates of relative poverty. By contrast, communities with the lowest proportion of population below that threshold were Navarra (7.4%) and the Basque Country (9.4%).

“The average annual net income per person in 2008 reached 9,865 euros. By region, which had the highest average income per person was Navarra (12,701 euros). By contrast, the lower income that had been Extremadura (7551 euros), “write the results of the survey.

People over 65, the poorest

By age, the highest rate of relative poverty is for over 65 years. However, include the reduction of poverty rate in this age group over the past four years, which has risen from 28.2% in 2007 to 24.6% in 2010.

With respect to housing space, in 2009 12.8% of households claimed to suffer lack of housing space. Municipalities with more than 500,000 inhabitants were those who had more houses with lack of space (18.2%) and less than 10,000 inhabitants had the lowest percentage of households with lack of space (7.9%).

On the other hand, 77.8% of adults said that spending money on yourself each week. By sex, the percentages of males were higher than those of women in all age groups. For both sexes, the rates were decreasing with increasing age, taking the lowest values in the case of those over 65 years.