Int. J. Phycol. Phycochem. 8(2): 137-144, 2012 *Presented the paper on October 16, 2012 at Second National Phycological Conference. OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEVELOPING SEAWEED INDUSTRY THROUGH PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP IN THE SINDH PROVINCE OF PAKISTAN Ehsan Elahi Valeem* 1 Institute of Marine Science, University of Karachi, Karachi-75270, Pakistan ABSTRACT Public Private Partnership (PPP) has appreciably motivated the public sector to provide value for money on short term basis. The PPP is a sharing of responsibility between government and private sector that usually shares in terms of services. Due to budgetary constraints the government of Pakistan is compelled to ask for loan from donor agencies like IMF and others. It cannot cater the monetary requirements of the projects in timely manner. The Corporate Sector plays a vital role through their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by providing social infrastructure/ services to the communities in their area of operation. For this reason the government has to engage itself into PPP arrangements. Unlike other governmental practices e.g. involving in infrastructure development such as roads, bridges and buildings etc., the Government of Sindh should be involved in social infrastructure development by strengthening community development. In the present study the need of PPP is advocated, practices in exploration of opportunities are highlighted and threats together with the development of criteria for evaluation for yielding optimum and substantial outputs are discussed with special emphasis on developing seaweed industry through PPP. Keywords: Algae, Seaweeds, Public private partnership, Investment opportunities, Pakistan. INTRODUCTION The goal of this study is to develop an approach for developing algae/ seaweed industries in Pakistan by saving and conserving freely available natural resource. Achievement of the goals will result in increased overall production of algal organisms, facilitating the production of indigenous algal oil both for edible and bio-fuel purposes. Micro-algae that are an excellent source of edible oil and bio-fuel production have been identified. Pakistan has a variety of algae as available in ckeck-list developed by Shameel & Tanaka (1992). Potential algal species conserved through culturing and establishing algal banks. Some potential algae are shown in Figs. 1-7. All of this was attempted to investigate the Public Private Partnership (PPP) opportunities for a joint venture to alleviate poverty. Public Private Partnership (PPP): It defines a PPP as a contract between a public sector and a private party, in which the private party assumes substantial financial, technical and operational risk in the design, financing, building and operation of a project. The types of PPPs defined as, where the private party performs an institutional/ municipal function; where the private party acquires the use of state/ municipal property for its own commercial purposes; and a PPP may also be a hybrid of these types. The PPP is defined in some regulations, makes it clear that: it is neither a simple outsourcing of functions where substantial financial, technical and operational risk is retained by the institution; nor a donation by a private party for a public good; nor the 'commercialization' of a public function by the creation of a state-owned enterprise; it does not constitute borrowing by the state (Gerrard 2001, Gupta et al. 2009, Valeem 2009).