Spotlight: Jamaica's PPP portfolio

The Jamaican government is looking to attract more private investment through public-private partnerships to help the island recover the positive economic growth it had been experiencing before the coronavirus pandemic. 

Authorities have an ambitious plan that aims to include the country in the World Bank’s Top 10 of its Doing Business report, Don Gittens, manager of Jamaica’s investment and export promotion agency Jampro, told a webinar hosted on Thursday by the Canadian Council for PPPs.

“To do this, there are some business environment transformations that we want to take,” he said, citing efforts to ease companies' registration and procurement procedures.

As an example of an upcoming PPP project, the official presented the Caymanas Special Economic Zone, a logistics and infrastructure project. 

The project involves a 236ha area near Kingston Freeport terminal in which the government expects a private partner to invest, develop, operate and market a logistics park to host services such as warehousing and distribution, software development, manufacturing, logistics and shared services, among others, Gittens said. 

The project’s estimated capex is US$221mn. 

“The feasibility study has already been completed and we’re in the process of structuring the transaction,” the Jampro representative said. 

SEEKING INVESTMENT

The government is also close to closing a commercial agreement for the US$60mn Rio Cobre water treatment plant that will supply clean water to the Kingston metropolitan area, Nicola Russel, manager of the PPP and privatization department at the Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ), told the webinar. The project will have capacity of 50mn gallons a day.

Authorities have also identified an investor to install and maintain a US$5mn photovoltaic generation and efficiency system for a pilot project with 30 selected schools, she said. 

Other shovel-ready projects with undetermined capex that are seeking investors involve a PPP for a solid waste management system that incorporates a waste-to-energy component and the construction of a new 5,000-bed maximum security correctional facility for both male and female inmates. Both have completed prefeasibility studies. 

There are also some PPP proposals in the water sector that involve the National Water Commission (NWC).

“NWC has prepared a capital development program, which seeks to develop key projects by 2030 to increase access to potable water to 85%, increase wastewater coverage by 50% along the way,” Glaister Cunningham, VP of investment and water monitoring at the agency told the forum. 

One of these projects is the US$85mn expansion of the Soapberry wastewater treatment plant that was constructed in 2007 in Portmore and Kingston. The idea is to double the plant’s capacity, which is currently 62,000m3/d. 

Other projects aim to reduce non-revenue water supply. One will tackle the southern parishes of Old Harbour, May Pen and Mandeville with a budget of US$65mn, while the other will be in the northern parishes of St Ann, St James and Trelawny with an investment of US$35mn. 

Additionally, a program to centralize and upgrade sewage infrastructure in different parishes of the island will be tendered in two projects. The most important, with estimated capex of US$500mn, involves four southern parishes, while the other will require US$70mn for the northern town of Falmouth. 

Among the public-private transactions that have already been completed is the construction, maintenance and 25-year operation of Kingston’s US$110mn Norman Manley International Airport, which is the country’s second largest and was awarded to Mexican airport operator GAP this year. Another is the concession of the US$49.2mn Wigton Windfarm, which has capacity of 62.7MW.