Small island countries are looking to public-private partnerships to fund major projects, a top lawyer said yesterday.

Duncan Card, managing principal of Bennett Jones Bermuda, was speaking after he sat on a panel at the KPMG-sponsored Island Infrastructure Summit in Miami.

“There are currently dozens of excellent public sector transformation and infrastructure projects being undertaken across the Caribbean region, each one bringing tremendous economic benefits, increased employment and increased operating efficiencies,” he said.

Mr Card added that smaller countries could build in safeguards to public-private partnerships, also known as P3, thereby protecting the public interest and workers in contracted-out projects.

“There are several unique aspects that should be considered. For example, none of these projects should be built on the back of, or at the expense of, labour in smaller jurisdictions like Bermuda,” he said.

“There are many commercially accepted ways to ensure that full employment is protected.

“As well, there are a vast number of creative and progressive ways to financing these projects off the public balance sheet that have been adopted in smaller jurisdictions across the globe, including in the Caribbean.”

Also at the summit was Michael Dunkley, who delivered a keynote address, Public Works Minister Craig Cannonier and Cabinet Secretary Derek Binns.

Afterwards, Mr Card said the mood of the conference was towards backing new ways to finance and run major projects.

He said: “Absolutely — no question. The projects I referred to definitely include P3 projects, outsourcing transactions and privatisation because in every case the government still remains in control through regulatory mechanisms.

“In these cases, government and the public interest remain fully protected when these operations are performed.

“In other jurisdictions, many airlines around the world have been privatised and other aspects of public infrastructure have been privatised, but they always remain under very tight control.”

Mr Card added that even countries with left-leaning socialist-style governments had embraced public-private partnerships to replace ageing infrastructure.

He said: “These are countries that know how to protect the interests of the public and labour and these transactions can be structured to do that.”

Mr Card, who returned to Bermuda last year after 25 years working in commercial law in Canada, where for 17 years he was included in the prestige international ranking of both Lexpert magazine and American Lawyer Media’s ranking of the top 500 lawyers, said the US and Canada had both benefited from new ways of providing services in a number of areas.

And he pointed to Canadian banks who outsourced IT services, transferring their own staff to new specialist operators.

“The employees who go over to these new companies are in companies which carry on business in their specialist field.”

He said that meant, in many cases, better training and opportunities to work elsewhere in firms with an international base.