The Public and Private Sector Role in the Provision of Infrastructure Services

The adequacy of infrastructure helps to determine one country's success and another's failure. Traditionally, in most of the countries, the largest part of the infrastructure finance has been provided by central governments. This model of finance has never been fully satisfactory, as attested by the large and growing infrastructure deficits in most of the countries. Market forces and competition can improve the production and delivery of infrastructure services. That is the consensus emerging from a reevaluation of the sector based on experience, technological change, and new insight into regulatory design. This new consensus is displacing the long-held view that infrastructure services are best produced and delivered by monopolies