刘世坚律师在联合国TOS PPP会议上的发言

本文选自刘世坚律师在联合国欧洲经济委员会于2016年10月20日在日内瓦万国宫举行的TOS PPP会议上的发言内容，略有改动。

Good afternoon! My name is Shijian Liu. I am a lawyer from JunHe LLP based in China. It’s my great honor to be here, on behalf of the consultant team of FuzhouMetro Line 2 PPP Project, to introduce to you about this project, and our thoughts from the perspective of People First PPP.  I know you talked a lot about lawyer today:) Chinese lawyers are good at PPP because we are consulting thousands of this kind of project these two years. We are doing PPP projects with People & client first principleJ Today my case study is about Fuzhou Metro Line 2.

I.                  Poverty Alleviation /Improving access toservices

As far as Fuzhou Project is concerned, we think that two major concerns of People first PPPs, i.e., poverty alleviation and improving access to services, are related to each other.

• Fuzhouis capital city of Fujian province, far away from Beijing, not rich but with strong development of economy. With the development of economy and rapid urbanization, Fuzhou also faces the problem of economy inequality.  A modern, efficient and sustainable transportation system is in urgent need, not only for easing traffic jam indowntown area, but also for boosting connectivity between the urban and ruralareas, helping the rural area to share the benefit of social and economicdevelopment.

• FuzhouMetro Line 2 is the main east-west line of Fuzhou, connecting downtown area,main urban area and rural area, passing commercial & financial area,residential area and university area. It is an amazing project for this City! It will definitely improve access for the rural people, with much lower cost and in a more efficient way, to essential public services, including education,medical treatment, professional training and so on.

• Withthe construction and operation of the Project, the commercial business along Line 2 will be boosted, and the value of land along the rail will go high. The people, especially those live in rural area will benefit from the project in a long term.

II.               Mitigating the effects of climate changeand cutting CO2 emissions

• This project is well defined and wellprepared

Ø Before this Project, the local government had been working on Fuzhou Metro Line 1 for years. A lot of experiences, goodand bad, are there for reference. To certain extent, the problems which emergedin Line 1, including the financing, land acquiring, construction, and deliveryof public services, push the local government to apply PPP model in Line 2.

Ø The preparation work made by the local government guarantees the quality of the Project to some extent, including plan, design, construction(civil works to be invested and completed by the government, and leased to thePPP Project Company), FSR, VFM & FCD.

Ø Fuzhou city government decided in 2015 to have the electromechanical system of Line 2 (the procurement and installation of the electromechanical system of Line 2 and the operation ofLine 2) carried out in the manner of PPP. 

• For now, there is large percentage of population living and working in downtown area of Fuzhou, but only 18% population travel by public transportation. In recent years, the number of vehicles grow very fast (motor vehicles increase by15%, electrical motor by 30%), adding traffic, and heavier burden on the environment as well.

• The Project will increase the ability of public transportation of Fuzhou, ease the traffic jam, and encourage the people to travel in a green way.

III.            Replicability, training of employees,women empowerment, engagement of all stakeholders, etc

• Replicability

I believe that Fuzhou Metro Company, after Line 1 & 2 projects, will go outside Fuzhou, go to market and share its successful experiences with other cities, just like Beijing Metro, where Mr. Ren comes from.

• Training of employees.

Fuzhou metro Line 1 has already prepared some human resources for Line 2, including well trained employees and experienced manager. With the participation of a competent private sector, we believe that the PPP project company will do much better in this respect.

• Women empowerment

Tobe honest, I must say “women empowerment” is not a real problem in modern China. Actually, our boss in this Project is female, Madam Fang. She has sufficient authorization from the government. Tough, demanding and determined.I have to say, one of the reasons that we can do a good job in this project is because of her.

• Engagement of all stakeholders

Ø By applying open bidding procedures, we selected a competitive and competent investor for the Project. The successful bidder is a consortium composed of five companies, each of them has its own advantages required for the project, including equipment manufacturing and supply, and operation as well.

Ø We create a new financial model based oncash flow to address the concerns about reasonable and steady return of investment. To some extent, this kind of financial model focusesless on traditional concept of VFM, but more on the project company’s ability and performance of delivering public services, so as to encourage the project company to move away from profit maximization to a continued, steady and high-quality provision of services. We think that it is also what the new generation of “PPPs for SDGs” is calling for.

Ø We set up a reasonable and complete risk allocation mechanism, to prevent the possible risks and lower its potential damages.

Ø We communicated with the relevant government authorities from time to time, to win their understanding and support, which is especially critical in China.

Ø We respect the ideal of People First, put the public interest in the first place, and reflect it in all kinds of requirements upon the Project Company.

Yes, standard is important for replicability. However, PPP project is so complicated that we cannot copy amodel without any change, no matter how successful such model is in a single project. We believe that innovation and creativity based on right ideals (like People First) is critical for a successful PPP project.

Sorry I am out of time. In conclusion, we would like to share our experience and understanding in different projects, industries, cities and countries. You are welcome to us if you are interested in China’s PPP.

Thank you!