Privatization is often a four-letter-word in South America.

The politically charged atmosphere of many countries makes many government officials extremely nervous to even utter the name during interviews, preferring to use the acronym PPP or "public private partnerships." But for cash-strapped governments, they have become a necessary evil.

In Ecuador, for example, the Ministry of Public Works had only a $350-million budget in 2006 to pay for maintenance and operation of more than 5,300 miles of national roadways and a pressing need for upgrading and constructing new routes between large markets.

But the pressing financial needs across the board and limited economic alternatives makes maintaining the highway system a delicate budgetary balancing act and improving it is almost an impossibly. The former government had expressed an interest in PPPs as a possible solution but, as an interim administration it had little leeway to move forward significantly with such efforts.

With the election of Raphael Correa last November, a populist with clear admiration for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' strategy of self sufficiency, the option of pursuing PPPs for services such as road maintenance and operation has become a remote one. Although Chavez has promised Ecuador $1 billion in credit to help handle a growing debt crisis, it is far from clear if that will be enough to alleviate the situation.

Despite the hand-wringing over the actions of Chavez and Bolivia's Evo Morales to nationalize the various industries, the motivation to do so is in the same vein as opposition to privatization efforts in the U.S. And while it is far from clear how much other Latin American countries are allied with Chavez's particular political view, the suspicion toward outright privatization is controversial across the region.

That suspicion of private enterprise taking advantage of the public services at the expense of the taxpayers is startlingly similar to opposition emerging in the United States to growing efforts to introduce PPPs.

In the United States, the movement toward Public Private Partnerships has accelerated in recent years. The U.S. Dept. of Transportation launched a pilot program to test whether public-private partnerships offer faster turnaround, better performance, less risk and better budget estimates than conventional projects, reported FederalTimes.com.

In testimony last month before the House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee on highways, Tyler Duvall, assistant secretary for transportation policy, said the Transportation Dept. "has made the expansion of public-private partnership a key component in [our] ongoing initiatives to reduce the high and growing costs of congestion and improve transportation system performance."

But many groups are critical of such plans. At that same hearing Todd Spencer, executive vice-president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association criticized the sale or long-term lease of public highways as a bad investment for the public.

"After America's motoring public paid federal and state taxes to build these roads, they are then sold to private investors to levy another form of tax increase on the American people. PPPs should mean, 'Private companies Playing the Public.' "

The secretary of transportation for Wisconsin, Frank Busalacchi testified that the vastly different goals of the public and private sectors would be difficult to balance.

"The public interest is different from the private interest and, in this case, it will be extremely difficult to assure a win-win solution," he testified. "The private sector's legal responsibility to its shareholders is to make money — profit is their purpose."

That is a sentiment is almost exactly the same as voiced by populist leaders in South America over privatizations although the rhetoric can be somewhat more grandiose.

"We have recovered for the people something that was once owned by the people," said Bolivia's President Evo Morales as he nationalized the country's sole tin smelter last month.

Morales, a close ally to Chavez, has balked at reimbursing Swiss mining giant Glencore International AG who purchased it in 2004 for $14 million. Last year he performed a similar but much more extensive nationalization of the country's hydrocarbon industry.

The move has raised further concerns for outside observers but has seemed to bolster the indigenous leader's popularity in Bolivia. A poll by Apoyo, Opinión y Mercado in February found that 65 percent of respondents approved of the head of state's performance, up six points since January.

That's a critical point in a country where several of the most recent presidents were ousted by public protests. A problem echoed in nearby Ecuador.

Although not every country in the region is as adamantly anti-privatization as Venezuela and Bolivia, the undercurrents of distrust for private involvement in general and foreign invovlment in particular are a constant concern.

But even staunch Venezuela is looking to PPPs as a way to maximize its resources. The government has recently called for mining companies with idle concessions to create PPPs where the state will hold the majority of the concession in order to ensure the resources stay in Venezuela.