Mr. Robert Watt:

There are various types of risk in regard to public private partnerships, including construction risk, which in a PPP project is treated differently from a traditional project, and risk associated with maintaining the building and having it available because unitary payments are made on the basis of the availability of the asset, whether a school or accommodation. Risk is taken account of in terms of the public sector benchmark reports. We have circulated some of them to the committee as part of these deliberations. The challenge is the difficulty of comparing the benefit of the risk transfer when it comes to the PPP with the risk pertaining to traditional projects. There are various formulae set out in the manual on how we do public sector benchmarking. The NDFA officials may be able to elaborate in more detail about how that is calculated. It is explicitly taken account of but it is challenging because obviously there are many uncertainties involved.