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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.

The Government of Liberia is in the process of developing a new Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) that is intended to determine its path toward middle-income status. One central aspect of the strategy is likely to be a stronger focus on inclusive growth. This will mean that higher priority will be placed on growing the local private sector, and broadening the base of the economy. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) in infrastructure and services can be a key instrument for achieving these goals especially in an economy like Liberia. The analysis contained in this study identifies the steps toward establishing PPPs as both a policy instrument and method for deepening private sector investment in Liberia. Liberia's rich natural resource endowments have played a fundamental role in the way in which the economy has developed, and in the way in which Government manages private investment in extractive industries. The Government itself has a long history of entering into concession contracts with private investors and operators. Firestone rubber first signed a concession agreement in 1926, and re-signed their concession to last until 2041. More recently, the Government of Liberia has entered into several large natural resource and mining concession contracts that will see large sums of private sector capital invested onshore. This study is one element of a multi-faceted effort to support local private sector and financial sector development in Liberia. It takes into close account the Government's focus on job-creation, the post-conflict dynamics in the country, and Liberia's reliance on extractive industries as a primary source of revenue. The analysis also builds on previous economic sector work that has looked closely at how to stimulate private sector growth and investment, how to support small and medium-size enterprise (SME), and how to leverage existing private sector investment to generate deeper local markets and create new jobs.

Competition policy attempts to address the potential for market failure by encouraging competition in service markets. Often, in wireless communication service markets, national regulatory authorities seek to encourage entry via the spectrum assignment process. Instruments used include the assignment mode (auction or beauty contest), setting aside licenses and providing bidding (price and quantity) credits for potential entrants, and making more licenses (spectrum blocks) available than there are incumbent firms (excess licenses). The empirical analysis assesses the effectiveness of these policy instruments on encouraging entry. The econometric results show that the probability of entry is enhanced by using auction assignments and excess licenses. Furthermore, quantity, but not price, concessions encourage entry.

The exploration of the so-called 'pre-salt area' of offshore Brazil under a specific production sharing regime is relatively new and brought about several changes in the Brazilian oil and gas regulatory framework as opposed to the system originally based on the concession regime. This paper presents a brief background of the Brazilian oil and gas industry, notably with respect to the changing process that introduced the new production sharing regime, and analyses the details involving the interferences from the Brazilian governmental authorities in the industry's activities and the implications for joint ventures intending to be involved with these activities.

This report assesses the potential of electricity contract auctions as a procurement option for the World Bank's client countries. It focuses on the role of auctions of electricity contracts designed to expand and retain existing generation capacity. It is not meant to be a 'how-to' manual. Rather, it highlights some major issues and options that need to be taken into account when a country considers moving towards competitive electricity procurement through the introduction of electricity auctions. Auctions have played an important role in the effort to match supply and demand. Ever since the 1990s, the use of long-term contract auctions to procure new generation capacity, notably from private sector suppliers, has garnered increased affection from investors, governments, and multilateral agencies in general, as a means to achieve a competitive and transparent procurement process while providing certainty of supply for the medium to long term. However, the liberalization of electricity markets and the move from single-buyer procurement models increased the nature of the challenge facing system planners in their efforts to ensure an adequate and secure supply of electricity in the future at the best price. While auctions as general propositions are a means to match supply with demand in a cost-effective manner, they can also be and have been used to meet a variety of goals.

Concession allocation by competitive bidding is always fiercely resisted by the local forest industrialists, and sometimes even by members of the forest service. One will be told that “It can't be done”, “It is too complicated”, “It is too expensive” or some such thing. Of course people who benefit from arbitrary allocation will oppose a more objective, transparent and equitable mechanism. It is nonsense to say that it cannot be done, but it will only be done where there are considerable incentives, for example in the form of major grants or loans on favourable terms.The competitive bidding system proposed in this article can considerably increase the revenue of the forest owners, correcting the perennial problem of under-valuation, which not only reduces the revenues of the forest owners but also encourages over-cutting. Bidding can also reduce corruption, although it can of course also be — and often is — undermined by corruption.

This book reviews the major developments in and the lessons learned from the 21-year (1991-2012) experience with private sector participation (PSP) in the power sector in India. It discusses the political economy context of the policy changes, looks at reform initiatives that were implemented for the generation sector, describes transmission and distribution segments at different points in the evolution of the sector, and concludes with a summary of lessons learned and a suggested way forward. The evolution of private participation in the Indian power sector can be divided into different phases. Phase one was launched with the opening of the generation sector to private investment in 1991. Phase two soon followed - early experiments with state-level unbundling and other reform initiatives, including regulatory reform, culminating in divestiture, and privatization in Orissa and Delhi respectively. Phase three, the passage of the electricity act of 2003 by the central government, followed by a large increase in private entry into generation and forays into transmission and experiments with distribution franchise models in urban and rural areas during the 11th five-year plan (2007-12) period. In phase four, at the start of the 12th five-year plan (2012-17), the sector is seeing a sharp reduction in bid euphoria and greater risk aversion on the part of bidders, who are concerned about access to basic inputs such as fuel and land. In this context, the report is structured as follows: chapter one gives introduction; chapter two presents private sector participation in thermal generation; chapter three presents private sector participation in transmission; chapter four deals with private sector participation in distribution; chapter five deals with private sector participation in the Indian solar energy sector; chapter six deals with financing of the power sector; chapter seven presents emerging issues and proposed approaches for the Indian power sector; and chapter eight give updates.

Little over a decade ago, infrastructure concessions promised to solve Latin America's endemic infrastructure deficit. Awarded in competitive auctions, these concessions were supposed to combine private sector efficiency with rent dissipation brought about by competition. Yet something did not go quite right, as concessions were plagued with opportunistic renegotiations, most of them at the expense of taxpayers. This book is a major contribution toward understanding what went wrong and what should be done differently in the future to reap the potential benefits of infrastructure reform and private participation in infrastructure provision. It begins by analyzing a rich data set on more than 1,000 infrastructure concessions, uncovering a series of puzzling stylized facts. It then considers alternative explanations for the patterns it has uncovered, and concludes with a series of insightful policy proposals aimed at avoiding the common mistakes and make concessions to efficiently contribute to economic growth and poverty reduction.

More than 1 billion people around the world live without access to safe, potable water, in part because of poor governance and corruption. Illegal connections and substantial losses caused by deferred maintenance have eroded the revenues of water utilities, leading to a downward spiral in performance. Embezzlement of funds, bribes for access to illegal water connections, manipulation of meter counters, and collusion in public contracts add to the litany of corrupt practices. 'Improving Transparency, Integrity, and Accountability in Water Supply and Sanitation' is a useful tool for diagnosing, analyzing, and remedying systemic corruption in the water supply and sanitation sectors. It will serve as a practical guide for governments; utility regulators, managers, and staff; civil society organizations; contractors; and citizens in their quest for a model of service provision that responds to the pressing needs of people in the developing world. The book aims to increase the involvement of civil society by engaging all stakeholders in setting priorities and monitoring performance; help water and sanitation delivery contribute to poverty reduction by increasing the service quality and coverage provided by service delivery organizations to poorer communities on an equitable basis; provide a tool that promotes the financial sustainability of service delivery organizations, thus building stakeholders' confidence in those institutions' ability to expand and improve service; and raise ethical standards among all stakeholders, especially service delivery organizations, thereby instilling a sense of public service in these organizations.

What transforms a desirable project on a government wish list to an attractive investment opportunity in the eyes of a potential private sector partner? This guide seeks to enhance the chances of developing effective partnerships between the public and the private sectors by addressing one of the main obstacles to the effective delivery of public-private partnership (PPP) projects: having the right information on the right project for the right partners at the right time. Data from the World Bank and the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) private participation in infrastructure (PPI) project database indicate that private sector investment in infrastructure in developing economies grew steadily over the past decade. By 2007 the levels had finally surpassed the peak levels seen in 1997, the end of the previous growth spurt. This guide focuses specifically on what should be done, and when, in order to prepare projects to attract the right long-term private partners, procure their involvement, and manage the partnership. This guide is not a detailed project preparation manual; rather, it seeks to provide an overview of the process and what is involved so that greater realism can be applied to this challenging task and adequate resource plans can be developed.