When Sauce for the Goose is not Sauce for the Gander—The divergent impact of transparency law in infrastructure procurement: evidence from EPC and PPP road projects in India

Akash Deep, Mojahedul Islam Nayyer and Thillai Rajan Annamalai

Construction Management and Economics, 2025, vol. 43, issue 11, 922-937

Abstract: Transparency in procurement, especially for large capital investments like infrastructure projects, is essential for enhancing accountability and performance. In the infrastructure sector, two procurement models are prevalent: the traditional Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) model of public procurement and the more modern long-term Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model. This study examines the impacts of India’s Right to Information (RTI) Act, a landmark transparency law enacted in 2005, on project performance under these models. Using data from 481 EPC and 510 PPP highway projects implemented between 2000 and 2019, we apply a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) methodology to identify causal impacts. A key innovation of our approach involves alternating treatment and control groups across time periods to enhance robustness by mitigating period-specific and model-specific biases. Findings reveal a divergence: while the transparency law reduced construction time in EPC projects, it increased costs in PPP projects. This suggests that transparency laws may improve efficiency in EPC, which has fewer built-in accountability mechanisms but imposes compliance burdens on PPP projects that already have performance incentives through bundled contracts with key performance indicators. For policymakers, the study highlights the need for context-specific governance strategies and draws attention to the trade-offs between transparency and efficiency in infrastructure procurement.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/01446193.2025.2545241

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