Malaysia has been a major success story among developing nations. In the last two decades, Malaysia has been able to fund a number of Public Private partnership (PPP) projects and get them off the ground successfully, with very little failure. The Government has also helped liberally in terms of last mile comfort without ever losing sight of the commercial nature of the enterprise. This paper provides an overview of some of the successful projects in ports, roads, rail, signaling systems, and Special Economic Zones (SEZs), and briefly goes into some of the issues which have made PPP such a major success in Malaysia for infrastructure. The fact that these processes are carried out in a developing country environment should attract the interest of other Asian countries with similar ethos.

Check your bag at the KL Central and zoom along the rail corridor at 70 km per hour. Land at the airport, go straight to immigration and zoom off, with a minimum wastage of time. Welcome to the new Malaysia.It has been a very long and hard road for Public Private partnerships (PPPs) in infrastructure. This has been specially true in the case of developing countries. Whilst the Private Finance Initiative in UK and many projects in the USA have had their degree of success, the success rate of PPPs in India, the Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and the like has not been exactly formidable. However, Malaysia is an exception. Between 1983 and 1999, Malaysia has put up more than 200 PPP projects and more than 90% of them have at least broken even. Most of these projects are connected with the transport sector—roads, bridges, rail, signaling systems, and the like—an area in which Malaysia has made a niche for itself.

What accounts for this success story? How has Malaysia succeeded where others have failed? What are the tools that have been used to ensure that these projects get off the ground and stay off the ground (the latter being a very important aspect).

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