The outsourcing of road maintenance to micro- and small enterprises underperformance based contracts (PBCs) has been recognized as an effective approach to rural road maintenance in many developing countries. This type of contacts link payments for the management and/or maintenance of pavements with the contractor successfully meeting or exceeding certain clearly defined minimum performance standards. If structured correctly, road maintenance PBC programs can effectively maintain pavements contributing to the sustainability of the local road networks, while at the same time, contributing to improved social welfare and local economic conditions. This paper presents the main findings a study that reviewed PBC models for the maintenance of sub-national networks in Latin America. The main conclusions of the study are that (1) small and micro-enterprises are a viable option for providing an effective approach for maintaining roads and creating local contracting capacity and (2) PBC contracts are a practical mechanism for contracting the maintenance of sub-national rural road networks to small andmicro-enterprises. For the covering abstract see ITRD E139491.
Abstract