The new public-private partnership (PPP) draft bill of Thailand is expected to take effect next month, with the aim of speeding up public investment, said Prasong Poontaneat, director-general of the State Enterprise Policy Office.The new bill, awaiting royal endorsement, seeks to plug the loophole of the existing 1992 PPP Act that supposedly has held back 120 projects jointly invested in by the public and private sectors. The existing law is ambiguous and makes it difficult to settle disputes. Mr Prasong said the new law hopes to cut approval time to just 7-8 months from up to two years.The bill also requires the government to set up a 2-billion-baht fund ($67 million) to promote PPPs by allowing new projects to use the fund to finance feasibility studies and terms-of-reference drafts without having to wait for projects to be approved first. He expects the first project that needs to comply with the law will be the new skytrain route across Bangkok.