A project finance structure allows water projects with attractive cash flows and risk profiles to secure long-term private capital. But even in industrial countries the credit strength of off-taking municipal governments and the sector's traditional monopoly structure expose lenders to...

Government guarantees for private infrastructure projects represent real liabilities, and their costs can average as much as a third of the amount guaranteed. The authors show how governments can use a risk valuation process to analyze the distribution of risks, decide which risks they should...

The authors discuss the impact of the East Asian financial crisis on the power sectors of four of the most severely affected economies-Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. For each country the authors examine the impact of the crisis on the cost of private power and the knock-on...

The Southern African Power Pool (SAPP), the first formal international pool to be set outside North American and Western Europe, was inaugurated in 1995. While the utilities of southern Africa have been importing and exporting electricity for four decades, these trades occurred through bilateral...

The Bolivia-Brazil natural gas pipeline, which will transport natural gas more than 3,000 kilometers, will cost US$2.1 billion to construct. Despite the substantial benefits for both Bolivia and Brazil and the involvement of reputable private partners, the perceived risks and complexities of...

The Greater Mekong subregion--Cambodia, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Yunnan Province of southern China--has good potential for international power trade. Initial interest in this market is being spearheaded by private developers negotiating bilateral...

The World Bank has agreed to support power sector reforms in Haryana with a new type of lending instrument--the adaptable program loan--recently approved by its board of directors. Under this approach, being applied for the first time, the Bank will provide a series of loans totaling US$600...

Ongoing privatization and financial liberalization in emerging economies have let to continuous growth in the number of depository receipt offerings from these countries. Asian and Latin American companies have been the biggest source of offerings. The main advantages of depository receipts stem...

Russia's power system is enormous consisting of more than 200 gigawatts of generation capacity, most of it interconnected by 2.5 million kilometers of high-voltage transmission lines spanning an area only slightly smaller than the United States and Canada combined. In early 1997 the Russian...

The United States has the world's largest natural gas market. Fifteen years of deregulation have delivered significant gains to consumers in the form of lower prices and more services. The experience shows that liberalizing wholesale gas prices and the bulk supply of natural gas frees market...