Public finance initiatives (PFIs) became notorious in Britain after the country ran up a mountain of infrastructure debt to private lenders on unfavourable terms.
An investigation published last year by the Independent on Sunday - with analysis verified by the National Audit Office - showed the United Kingdom owed more than 222billion ($448billion) to banks and businesses as a result of PFIs.
Deals include unfavourable service contracts for maintenance and cleaning, as well as construction loan repayment.
PFIs had yielded assets of 56.5billion ($113billion) but the UK would pay back more than five times that amount, and in some cases organisations would be left with nothing to show for it, as some PFIs were effectively leasing agreements, the newspaper reported.
A professor emerita at Manchester Business School told the Independent on Sunday that PFIs had been an ``enormous financial disaster'', and that ``no rational Government'' would have signed up to them.
The Guardian reported in 2012 that some National Health Service organisations would end up paying almost 12 times the initial sum over what was usually a 30-year contract.
