UK public spending watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO) has released a report suggesting that “the public sector may often be paying more than is necessary for using [private] equity investment” to fund the country’s infrastructure needs.
The report pertains to the role of equity in helping to fund projects that form part of the UK’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI), the country’s standardised procurement process for public-private partnership projects.
PFI equity ‘overpriced’
The UK’s National Audit Office believes drawn-out procurement processes and minimum investor rates of return are not synchronised with projects’ risk profiles and may have inflated PFI equity returns over the years.
