Emerging Europe is finally getting the hang of private-invested infrastructure projects. Kazakhstan, pushing ahead with an aggressive reform and asset liberalisation programme, is in the throes of completing a $680m, 66km-long ring road around the country’s financial centre of Almaty. The landmark construction project is set to be co-financed by the EBRD and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Kazakhstan would be a worthy winner of this award — but only in a year or two’s time, depending on how its PPP programme pans out. For now, there is only one viable winner in this category. Turkey has spent the past decade pushing ahead with a series of eye-popping infrastructure projects, many financed by private investors and development banks, which aim to support the ambitions of the fourth fastest-growing economy in the G20 group of nations.
No project better defines Turkey’s construction spree than the €7bn ($8bn) Istanbul New Airport, set to open in 2018. When completed, it will be one of the world’s largest airports, with six runways, flights to 350 destinations and processing 200 million passengers a year. Its designers expect it to emulate Dubai and Abu Dhabi by acting as a key hub for connecting flights between North America, Europe and Asia.
Other key PPP projects being rolled out or finalised across the country include the Yavuz Sultan Selim bridge, also known as the Third Bosphorus bridge, which will alleviate congestion in Istanbul; a slew of part-privately financed hospitals; and the 15km-long Mount Ovit road tunnel in the northeast of the country.
One development banker describes Turkey’s infrastructure finance programme as “one of the world’s most thoughtful, certainly in terms of how it goes about harnessing private capital. You have infrastructure, hospital and education PPPs, based on the UK’s private finance initiative scheme.” According to the World Bank’s Private
Participation in Infrastructure database, Turkey ranked fifth worldwide in the 25 years to end-2015 by the number of privately financed infrastructure projects it managed to complete (178 in all, with a cumulative value of $118bn). A worthy winner.