Local Government Implicit Debt Under China’s Public Private Partnerships: Scope, Formation and Governance

Abstract

Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), as an important mean to establish a standardized local government debt financing mechanism, relieve the pressure of local government debt, resolve the fund shortage of urbanization and promote supply-side structural reform, has increasingly become the main mode and source of China's infrastructure investment and financing. It has made an important contribution to the increase of supply scale, quality and efficiency in public services and infrastructures. But with the rapid promotion and widespread, local government provided illegal guarantees of fixed income and repurchase, or beared the loss of principal, issued Local Government Financing Vehicles(LGFVs) debts, and even disguised government purchasing services, which have make the PPPs alienated into a new financing vehicles. This paper defines the concept and scope of local government implicit debt, analyzes the tool characteristics of PPPs, the necessary and sufficient conditions for debt governance function of PPPs, and the formation mechanism, manifestation and evolution path of local government implicit debt. Then several countermeasures of implicit debt governance and risk prevention strategies under PPPs are put forward, including clarifying the relationship between the government and the market, promoting PPPs debt governance through win-win cooperation, improving PPPs laws and regulations, strengthening PPPs performance management, and improving PPPs risk sharing mechanism.