Electricity, natural gas, telecommunications, railways, and water supply, are often vertically and horizontally integrated state monopolies. This results in weak services, especially in developing and transition economies, and for poor people. Common problems include low productivity, high costs, bad quality, insufficient revenue, and investment shortfalls. Many countries over the past two decades have restructured, privatized and regulated their infrastructure. This report identifies the challenges involved in this massive policy redirection. It also assesses the outcomes of these changes, as well as their distributional consequences for poor households and other disadvantaged groups. It recommends directions for future reforms and research to improve infrastructure performance, identifying pricing policies that strike a balance between economic efficiency and social equity, suggesting rules governing access to bottleneck infrastructure facilities, and proposing ways to increase poor people's access to these crucial services.

The worldwide championing of the privatisation concept has led many governments to look for new ways of identifying and funding their infrastructure needs. The Build Operate/Own Transfer arrangement for infrastructure procurement has subsequently evolved, which, it is said, provides a win-win scenario for all involved. Privatized infrastructure: The BOT approach explains how, where and why the BOT concept evolved and to highlight the possible pitfalls as well as the potential windfalls.

Public-Private Partnerships for Infrastructure - Principles of Policy and Finance, Second Edition explains how public private partnerships are prepared, procured, financed, and managed from both the public- and private-sector perspectives. As the use of public private partnerships continues to develop world-wide, both in the area of public policy and private financing and contracting, the Second Edition of this leading textbook: - Captures and explains the latest approaches, providing a comprehensive all-round guide for those on both the public- and private-sector sides of the table - Emphasises a step-by-step approach within a comprehensive, cross-referenced format - Includes clear explanations of PPP evaluation, structuring and financing concepts for the benefit of those new to the topic: no prior knowledge is assumed or required - Provides detailed reference points for more experienced practitioners - Draws from the authors' experience and practice in PPP markets worldwide to provide a perspective on practical application of the key underlying principles - Includes an extensive glossary of technical and financial terms used in the PPP sector - Includes more technical information and a stronger legal perspective than other books - Emphasizes a step-by-step approach within a comprehensive, cross-referenced format - Expands and updates the historical backgrounds and political contexts of public-private partnerships

Economic development and social welfare depend on the existence of effective and efficient infrastructure systems, particularly in health, energy, transportation and water, many of which are developed and managed through Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). However, empirical evidence suggests some pitfalls in the use of these PPP arrangements. This book addresses these issues, focusing on mostly three key questions: How to improve the robustness of the decision-making process leading to the option of PPP? How to improve contract management as the longest phase of the process? How can contracts be improved to accommodate uncertainty and avoid harmful renegotiations? The authors explore the concept of flexible contracts, the uncertainty modeling for improving the robustness of the decision-making process, and develop an overall framework for effective contract management, along with a comprehensive analysis of current renegotiation patterns. The ultimate goal is to improve the contractual performance, as well as the overall infrastructure management and social welfare. ​

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.

Investment in infrastructure is critical to economic growth, quality of life, poverty reduction, access to education, good quality healthcare, and achieving many of the goals of a robust and dynamic economy. However, infrastructure is difficult for the public sector to get right. This remarkably insightful and enormously useful book, now in its third edition, shows how the private sector (through public–private partnerships – PPP) can provide more efficient procurement through cheaper, faster, and better quality; refocus infrastructure services on consumer satisfaction and life cycle maintenance; place the financial burden of providing infrastructure on consumers rather than taxpayers; and provide new sources of investment, in particular through limited recourse debt (i.e., project financing). Taking the particular challenges associated with PPP fully into account. this book provides a practical guide to PPP in all the following ways and more: - how governments can enable and encourage PPP; - how PPP financing works; - what PPP contractual structures look like; and - most importantly, how PPP risk allocation works in practice. Specific discussion of each infrastructure sector is provided. Lawyers and business people, civil engineers, economic development officials and specialists, banking and insurance professionals, and academics will all find the ground well covered in this book, as well as new ground broken.

The book the American Prospect calls “an essential resource for future reformers on how not to govern,” by America’s leading defender of the public interest and a bestselling historian “An essential read for those who want to fight the assault on public goods and the commons.” —Naomi Klein A sweeping exposé of the ways in which private interests strip public goods of their power and diminish democracy, the hardcover edition of The Privatization of Everything elicited a wide spectrum of praise: Kirkus Reviews hailed it as “a strong, economics-based argument for restoring the boundaries between public goods and private gains,” Literary Hub featured the book on a Best Nonfiction list, calling it “a far-reaching, comprehensible, and necessary book,” and Publishers Weekly dubbed it a “persuasive takedown of the idea that the private sector knows best.” From Diane Ravitch (“an important new book about the dangers of privatization”) to Heather McGhee (“a well-researched call to action”), the rave reviews mirror the expansive nature of the book itself, covering the impact of privatization on every aspect of our lives, from water and trash collection to the justice system and the military. Cohen and Mikaelian also demonstrate how citizens can—and are—wresting back what is ours: A Montana city took back its water infrastructure after finding that they could do it better and cheaper. Colorado towns fought back well-funded campaigns to preserve telecom monopolies and hamstring public broadband. A motivated lawyer fought all the way to the Supreme Court after the state of Georgia erected privatized paywalls around its legal code. “Enlightening and sobering” (Rosanne Cash), The Privatization of Everything connects the dots across a wide range of issues and offers what Cash calls “a progressive voice with a firm eye on justice [that] can carefully parse out complex issues for those of us who take pride in citizenship.”