Many long-term observers of the public private partnership (PPP) market in the GCC have developed a healthy degree of scepticism over the years. Too many false dawns have unsurprisingly led them to believe that the PPP model of procurement is one that simply won’t ever take off in this market – at least outside of the power and water sectors. The increased interest in PPP over the past 24 months is, in the minds of the sceptics, a short term blip that will be forgotten as soon as the oil price begins to climb or structural changes on the expenditure side allow regional governments to balance their budgets by other means.