Concessions

Governments have long been engaged in providing goods or services to their citizens that could, in some form, be provided by the private sector. The trend over the past few decades, however, has been to transfer these functions, and the state-owned assets used to provide them, to private hands. The most common method, and the one usually preferred, is privatisation, or outright sale or transfer of ownership of the relevant assets to one or more private parties. Another method is concessions. Concessions are often viewed as a substitute for privatisation when the latter is not feasible for political or legal reasons. Concessions are not substitutes for regulation. Where there is a need for regulation, as in a situation of natural monopoly, a regulatory regime may be created along with the concession. This document comprises proceedings in the original language of a Roundtable on Concessions which was held at the Global Forum on Competition in February 2006.