The Federation Council approves the bill on public-private partnership

Today the "upper" chamber of the Russian parliament (Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation) approved the draft of federal law "On public-private partnership, municipal-private partnership in the Russian Federation and the Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation".
On July 1 the act was passed by the State Duma of Russia. It is expected that in the coming days it will be signed by the Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is expected that the law will come into force on January 1, 2016.
According to the bill if the total volume of public investment in the project exceeds the amount of private investment, at the termination of the agreement is necessarily to transfer the object of the agreement into the public property.
A closed list of objects of the PPP Agreement (MPP) was established. Among them: private roads or their sections, bridges, road service facilities, ports, airports, power plants, waterworks, artificial islands, land improvements, health care, education, culture, sports, tourism, social services, facilities for which carries out the processing and disposal of solid communal waste. It is not allowed to make PPP agreement with sources of thermal energy, heat networks, water supply and sanitation.
 
TIDA Press Service

According to the bill the private partner can only be a Russian legal entity and without necessarily dominant state participation (it cannot be state and municipal unitary enterprises and institutions, as well as economic entities under the control of the state).

Until now Russia has been used only one form of PPPs - concession agreements. However, there are more than 20 forms of PPP in the world. The principal difference from most forms of PPP from concession - the possibility of appearing a private ownership of the object of the agreement. Having an asset to the property, it can be used, for example, as collateral to banks. This section of the law has caused controversy in the State Duma of the Russian Federation, which, according to deputies, can lead to risks of hidden privatization. In the approved version of the bill, these risks sufficiently cropped by the fact that the obligations under the agreement on PPP follow the object and recorded as a burden.