PPP Development Stage – Preparing Business Plans

14.4 What are the key issues concerning the poor?

Understanding the poor, meeting poverty reduction goals

The strategic plans have spelled out in general terms the partnership’s link to poverty reduction. In particular and in common with the strategic plan, the business plan will need to address how proposed service improvements will be undertaken so as to address the needs of the poor. It will address key issues such as:

• service prioritisation and linkages;
• the poverty and gender focus of the approach;
• the approach to labour deployment; and
• the approach to independent service providers.

In this regard the business plan also needs to:

• develop understanding of the specific objectives for poor communities by:
  – carrying out participatory studies of livelihoods; and
  – exposing institutional and political marginalisation;
• identify key components of poverty-focused activities;
• identify and prioritise key concerns of the poor, for example, lack of choice, lack of affordability, inaccessibility, exploitation, insecurity of tenure and employment opportunities;
• identify key actors and existing assets and delivery mechanisms: informal service providers, local NGO support, interdependent households and communities, municipal actors (community development, health, champions), and private operators; and
• address lessons and concerns and include key actors as primary components in partnership framework.

 

Non-monetary attractiveness

A business plan often shows only the monetary value of the project. However, the partnership can bring non-monetary values to the customers – for instance, improvements to the state of the environment after waste management and sanitation services have been introduced/expanded.