Public-private partnership (PPP) is an important and attractive way of implementing public services as part of a collaboration between the public and private sectors. The attractiveness results from the option of financial engineering of public resources and private capital, with each party fulfiling its own objectives simultaneously and separately. With budget constraints today, co-operation between both sectors increases the effectiveness of public services by risk-sharing and using the private sector’s experience in dealing with particular types of tasks, especially in investment. Besides, the private sector provides financing, which allows public sector units to utilize budgetary resources in other areas.
This study aims to analyse the state of affairs and to evaluate the current market of PPP projects in Poland in comparison to other European countries. Also, it shows actions undertaken to accelerate growth in this market. The analysis covers the years 2009 to 2017.
The appraisal of PPP in Poland was based on the relevant literature, European PPP Expertise Centre reports, Ministry of Investment and Development reports, Centrum PPP reports and the author’s own research. The methods used were descriptive statistics and inferencing. The findings show that the Polish PPP market diverges from other EU markets in the number of projects, their value, structure and character. The prevailing type in Poland is low-value self-government infrastructure projects. In recent years, Polish governments have often taken legislative and promotional action to more engage the private sector in public services. This has resulted in the adoption of a road map for co-operation between the two sectors, in appointing advisory and consulting teams at the government level, and in numerous training and promotion practices.