Public private partnerships: only for the well-off? Evidence from the rural productive partnership project in Colombia

This paper focuses on assessing the evidence that Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) work well for producers from vulnerable backgrounds and/or located in post conflict zones. Looking at data from the Rural Productive Partnership Project (PAAP), a decade long program designed to overcome market barriers in Colombia, and using a combination of statistical and econometric techniques such as principal component analysis, survival models and impact assessment methods, results reveal that partnerships with vulnerable populations perform similar to others with better off participants. Partnerships in post-conflict zones perform slightly worse than those in other areas. Additionally, there is no difference in the duration of agribusiness contracts, regardless of producers’ backgrounds and location in a post-conflict zone or not. The impact assessment exercise confirms an increase in households’ sales of the PAAP product. These findings suggest that market access PPPs such as the PAAP can be inclusive, helping to link marginalized smallholder farmers to modern agricultural value chains.