Development of Private-Public Participation in Iranian Water Resources to Boost the Tourism Industry

Abstract

Nowadays, tourism is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. It plays a prominent role in countries’ economies since not only it directly contributes to the national income, but it also indirectly benefits adjacent industries through spillovers. Tourism has been the primary source of income for many emerging countries. Unfortunately, Iran has not been taking advantage of this industry since 1979 due to its reliance on revenues from the oil industry. However, due to rapidly declining oil revenues in the recent past, Iran’s economic cycle has been interrupted, resulting in a recession. During a recession, a significant portion of the government’s projected resources for keeping the country up and running will not be realized. In such situations, Public-Private Partnership (PPP) could boost the economy by expanding the adjacent businesses. In this paper, we demonstrate a PPP plan which leverages water resources and facilities to boost the tourism industry in Iran. In particular, we study in detail the partnership evolution in Iran, and propose appropriate PPP implementation mechanisms by defining autonomous projects. We show that our proposed approach could boost Iran’s economy. As a byproduct, it could also enhance the outlook of Iran’s tourism industry.