Suchergebnisse

Lit.

The paper documents the differences between the rhetoric and the evidence on the infrastructure privatization experience that started in the mid-1990s. It shows the heterogeneity across regions and across sub-sectors of the relative importance of the private actors in infrastructure financing. It then reviews the long term evidence on the efficiency and equity effects of the policy. It shows that reformers have underestimated the trade-offs between efficiency and equity, as well as their fiscal effects. Moreover, it finds that in many cases, the initial improvements credited to privatization eroded with time in sectors in which competition was limited so that the performance differences with state-owned enterprises disappeared. Finally, it suggests that, in most countries, policies focusing on market structure, competition, regulation and institutional and governance strengthening have been much more important determinants of performance than privatization per se. It concludes by arguing that more realism and less ideology will go a long way in allowing the various forms of privatization to contribute to the global infrastructure agenda in the interest of all stakeholders. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Although the link between improved infrastructure services and economic growth is uncertain, it is clear that reforms aimed at creating competition and regulating natural monopolies establish an environment conducive to private sector participation, incentives for companies to strive for efficiency savings that can ultimately be passed on to consumers, and greater provision of services (such as faster roll-out of infrastructure or innovative solutions to service delivery for customers not connected to an existing network). In determining the form that infrastructure restructuring might undertake or the design of a regulatory agency, policymakers can generally benefit from a review of the experiences of other countries. A key element of any decision making process should be a review of how the various types of reform will affect the efficiency of the sector and whether they will increase private financing of its significant investment needs.