To overcome huge shortfalls in access to infrastructure services, poor countries need much higher investment levels and more expertise to build, operate, and maintain infrastructure facilities. The private sector is one source for such resources, and projects involving private participation in...

Rapid growth in project finance, driven by huge increases in liquidity, helped fuel the gains in private participation in infrastructure (PPI) in developing countries in the past decade. But when the financial crisis hit, the excess liquidity began to dry up as lenders backed away from practices...

In developing countries the global financial crisis is leading to serious difficulties for infrastructure projects with private participation. In some cases governments are responding by simplifying their project approval processes or by substituting public for private financing. Even if markets...

In 2001-03 the municipal bond market in Mexico was among the most active in the developing world. Government officials had found a way to dramatically enhance the creditworthiness of local government debt without using sovereign guarantees. The technique, adapted in part from private sector...

Once expected to be the signature contract of private participation in infrastructure and for a time its fastest growing form, the brown field concession was hit hard by the Asian crisis and has never recovered. Because these contracts involve existing, usually dilapidated government assets,...

Over a two-year period, beginning in late 2004, the Nigerian federal government implemented one of the most ambitious port concessioning programs ever attempted. The success of this program resulted from the government's vision and decisiveness, as well as the need to remedy massive shortcomings...

In Africa. many now seem to agree that developing infrastructure is critical for reducing poverty and promoting sustained economic growth, that the private sector has an essential contribution to make in this effort, and that while expanding the private sector's participation in infrastructure...

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the overwhelming need for infrastructure has motivated regional economic organizations to push for an ambitious agenda of private participation. But to begin solving Africa's infrastructure investment problems will also require broad institutional reform along with greater...

African officials have shown new interest in infrastructure projects involving private participation. But with so little experience with such projects, these officials often have limited knowledge about how best to assess their value for money. Some experts have suggested that developing...