Structuring Alternative Investment in Public Private Partnership Projects Using Islamic Financial Instruments

The provision of sustainable infrastructure in an economic environment packed with limited budgetary resources and restrained market demand poses severe investment challenges for the public and the private sectors. Such challenges do exist not only in the provision of new facilities but also in maintaining the existing public infrastructure. Public-private partnerships are considered an effective solution for infrastructure provision under the restrained financial situation, however, the longer time-period involved in PPPs make such investments riskier and eventually results in higher project costs. Islamic financing through newer on global investment landscape but may offer a simpler and competitive solution for medium to long term investment issues for public-private partnerships. Islamic finance is a set of Shariah-compliant financial instruments that could be engineered to adjust to a given investment environment. This paper provides an insight into the latest Islamic financial instruments for understanding their applicability to present-day PPP environment. It describes the use of the most relevant of the Islamic financial instruments, which could be applied for PPP/PFI investment to ensure project sustainability in financial terms.