ABSTRACT
Portugal has made a great effort over the past 25 years to close the wide infrastructure gap. The purpose of this chapter is to describe the Portuguese experience in relation to Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), to discuss how the PPP programme was organised, and to address the motives behind the decision to use a PPP. Usually, the use of PPPs is based on the argument that without PPPs, constructing those assets rapidly would not have been possible due to budgetary constraints. The last amendment in 2012 focused on centralising the PPP process in the Ministry of Finance in order to increase the transparency and control over PPPs, and at the same time expand the central government's powers over regional and local PPPs. The taskforce report is a necessary starting point for the launching of a PPP as it comprises the main characteristics of the technical, legal and financial issues for each project.
