The Impact Of Private Sector Participation In Infrastructure

Infrastructure plays a key role in fostering growth and productivity and has been linked to improved earnings, health, and education levels for the poor. Yet Latin America and the Caribbean are currently faced with a dangerous combination of relatively low public and private infrastructure investment. Those investment levels must increase, and it can be done. If Latin American and Caribbean governments are to increase infrastructure investment in politically feasible ways, it is critical that they learn from experience and have an accurate idea of future impacts. This book contributes to this aim by producing what is arguably the most comprehensive privatization impact analysis in the region to date, drawing on an extremely comprehensive dataset.

"Many of the problems are related to difficulties in sustaining cost-covering user fees for these sectors. This study aims to distill the experience over the last 15 years. The main factors in the growth and subsequent decline are examined. The report assesses the impact that the private provision of infrastructure has had on service delivery and analyzes the consequences for other important goals. Main policy lessons are provided for governments that seek to ensure that the supply of infrastructure services does not become a bottleneck to growth."--BOOK JACKET.

Governments have long recognized the vital role that modern infrastructure services play in economic growth and poverty alleviation. For much of the post-Second World War period, most governments entrusted delivery of these services to state-owned monopolies. But in many developing countries, the results were disappointing. Public sector monopolies were plagued by inefficiency. Many were strapped for resources because governments succumbed to populist pressures to hold prices below costs. Fiscal pressures, and the success of the pioneers of the privatization of infrastructure services, provided governments with a new paradigm. Many governments sought to involve the private sector in the provision and financing of infrastructure services. The shift to the private provision that occurred during the 1990s was much more rapid and widespread than had been anticipated at the start of the decade. By 2001, developing countries had seen over $755 billion of investment flows in nearly 2500 infrastructure projects. However, these flows peaked in 1997, and have fallen more or less steadily ever since. These declines have been accompanied by high profile cancellations or renegotiations of some projects, a reduction in investor appetite for these activities and, in some parts of the world, a shift in public opinion against the private provision of infrastructure services. The current sense of disillusionment stands in stark contrast to what should in retrospect be surprise at the spectacular growth of private infrastructure during the 1990s.

Essential to anyone involved in the planning, design, construction, operation, or finance of infrastructure assets, this innovative work puts project delivery, finance, and operation together in a practical new formulation of how public and private owners can better manage their entire collection of infrastructure facilities.

Abstract: Trujillo, Martín, Estache, and Campos provide empirical evidence on the impact that private participation in infrastructure has had on key macroeconomic variables in a sample of 21 Latin American countries from 1985-98. Specifically, they look at the effects on GDP per capita, current public expenditures, public investment, and private investment, controlling for country effects and institutional factors. The authors also investigate the relevance of the specific contractual form of private participation contracts on these variables and show differentiated effects according to contract types. The results suggest that: Private sector involvement in utilities and transport have some, but not impressive, positive effects on GDP per capita; There is some degree of crowding-out of private investment resulting from greenfield projects in utilities, and delayed crowding-in from concessions in transport. There is crowding-in of public investment by private participation in utilities, while there is crowding-out by increased private investment in transport; Private participation in utilities decreases recurrent expenditures, while in transport it results in an increase. The net effect on the public sector account is uncertain, but this uncertainty is a major risk. The revelation of this risk may be the main contribution of this paper since it is inconsistent with the fiscal gains expected by many policymakers as they engage in infrastructure privatization programs. This paper"a product of the Governance, Regulation, and Finance Division, World Bank Institute, and Finance, Private Sector, and Infrastructure Unit, Latin America and the Caribbean Region"is part of a larger effort in the Bank to increase understanding of infrastructure regulation.

Infrastructure development has always been one of the fundamental measures of a country’s progress and development. In the past, infrastructure development was mostly implemented by public sector using its own resources and acting as the main financier and owner of such infrastructure projects to meet the needs of growing economies. As the population of the world kept increasing at enormous rates and due to competitive landscape between global economies, the need for infrastructure development kept pacing up exponentially. As countries tend to have limited financial resources when it comes to cover all the needs, generally the countries tends to focus on certain sectors of economy to be owned and developed by the public sector where as private sector participation becomes a necessity in other sectors of economies that needs financing over the limited public resources. To resolve the financial constraints faced by public sector in developing infrastructure, more and more countries are moving towards private sector participation to have such projects financed and implemented through Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). PPPs, if structured and delivered in the most optimal manner, are known to also result in increased quality of service delivery and a lower NPV of costs associated with such infrastructure project when compared to public sector implementation. PPPs are complexed structured and comes in many forms. This book covers different form of private public partnerships and relevant pros and cons of each such form. Towards the end, the book focuses on project finance structure which is usually structured as build-own-operate and/or transfer basis and is required for large scale infrastructure projects and the author’s core experience is delivery of infrastructure on these type of PPP structure. There are several PPP guides available in the market, however, we, have tried our best in this book to summarize the learnings from our experiences. This book can be considered the first book to be written on PPPs focusing on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia commercial requirements and risk allocation framework and incorporates knowledge of the wider GCC region. Lessons learned to make a PPP project successful are provided towards end of the book.

"Private particpation in infrastructure has moved to the top of the political, economic, and social agendas of a growing number of countries. The focus of the debate is beginning to shift from the why to the how, fueling the demand for lessons on best practice in reform strategies, regulatory frameworks, institutional arrangements, and risk mitigation. This collection of policy briefs on private participation in infrastructure responds to this demand. Drawing on a wide range of experience in different countries and sectors, these briefs seek to broaden understanding on risk allocation, institutional arrangements, choice of regulatory rules, and the scope for competition in infrastructure provision" -- Preface.

Trujillo, Martiacute;n, Estache, and Campos provide empirical evidence on the impact that private participation in infrastructure has had on key macroeconomic variables in a sample of 21 Latin American countries from 1985-98. Specifically, they look at the effects on GDP per capita, current public expenditures, public investment, and private investment, controlling for country effects and institutional factors. The authors also investigate the relevance of the specific contractual form of private participation contracts on these variables and show differentiated effects according to contract types.The results suggest that:ʼn Private sector involvement in utilities and transport have some, but not impressive, positive effects on GDP per capita.ʼn There is some degree of crowding-out of private investment resulting from greenfield projects in utilities, and delayed crowding-in from concessions in transport.ʼn There is crowding-in of public investment by private participation in utilities, while there is crowding-out by increased private investment in transport.ʼn Private participation in utilities decreases recurrent expenditures, while in transport it results in an increase.The net effect on the public sector account is uncertain, but this uncertainty is a major risk. The revelation of this risk may be the main contribution of this paper since it is inconsistent with the fiscal gains expected by many policymakers as they engage in infrastructure privatization programs.This paper - a product of the Governance, Regulation, and Finance Division, World Bank Institute, and Finance, Private Sector, and Infrastructure Unit, Latin America and the Caribbean Region - is part of a larger effort in the Bank to increase understanding of infrastructure regulation.