Private Finance Initiative
The private finance initiative (PFI) is a way of creating "public–private partnerships" (PPPs) by funding public infrastructure projects with private capital. Developed initially by the Australian and United Kingdom governments, PFI and its variants have now been adopted in many countries as part of the wider neo-liberal programme of privatisation and financialisation driven by an increased need for accountability and efficiency for public spending, national governments, and international bodies such as the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank. PFI has been controversial in the UK; the National Audit Office felt that it provided good value for money overall. however more recently the Parliamentary Treasury Select Committee found that "Higher borrowing costs since the credit crisis mean that PFI is now an ‘extremely inefficient’ method of financing projects".
http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/treasury-committee/news/pfi-report/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_finance_initiative
