Research On Value For Money Of PPP Projects Based On Catastrophe Progression Method

Public-Private Partnership(PPP)model refers to a way of all-round cooperation between government and social capital in project financing,construction,operation and management in the construction of public infrastructure and the provision of public services.PPP model can fully integrate the advantages of government and private sector,improve the output efficiency of public goods.And government and private sector can share project costs and risks through PPP model.Thus,it has set off an upsurge of applying PPP model in China.In order to reduce the operational risk of PPP model,the Ministry of Finance requires that the project must conducting a value for money(VfM)analysis before adopting PPP model.The system of VFM assessment in China is not yet mature.Although scholars have made many useful discussions on how to improve the assessment system,these discussions have not paid enough attention to the influence of subjectivity of expert scoring method on qualitative evaluation.At the same time,the process of VFM assessment lacks horizontal comparison,which can not further show the value for money properties of PPP projects.This study focuses on the above shortcomings and try to improve the assessment system further.By introducing the principle and application of catastrophe theory and catastrophe progression method,the applicability of catastrophe progression method in VFM evaluation is firstly analyzed combining the characteristics of PPP model and value for money evaluation.Secondly,a two-stage value for money evaluation system of urban construction PPP project is established based on catastrophe progression method,in which the indexes of decision-making stage are scored by experts.The result of value for money in decision-making stage is obtained by catastrophe series method,and then compared horizontally with that of other similar national demonstration PPP projects which have finished the assessment of value for money.According to the comparison results,the value for money attribute of the target project in decision-making stage is judged.In the operation stage,the PSC(Public Sector Comparator)method is used to compare the PSC value of the project with the shadow quotation.The result of comparison decides whether the PPP project is worth the money.It is found that the catastrophe progression method has good applicability in the assessment of the value for money of PPP projects.The assessment system based on the catastrophe progression method can effectively reduce the adverse impact of the subjectivity of expert scoring on the evaluation results.PPP projects can be compared horizontally with other similar projects by using the evaluation system,which can further show the value for money of PPP projects objectively.