Private provision of rural infrastructure services: competing for subsidies

Bjorn Wellenius, Vivien Foster and Christina Malmberg-Calvo

No 3365, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Market-oriented reforms of infrastructure in developing countries tend to focus primarily on commercially viable services in urban areas. Nevertheless, an increasing number of countries are beginning to experiment with extending the market paradigm to infrastructure services in rural areas that are often less attractive in commercial terms. In these cases, subsidies are used to close the gap between market requirements and development needs, and are increasingly determined and allocated on a competitive basis. The authors discuss the conditions under which competition among firms for such subsidies-successfully used in the telecommunications sector in a number of middle-income countries-could also be applied to electricity, water and sanitation, and transportation services in lower-income countries.

Keywords: Health Economics&Finance; Environmental Economics&Policies; Public Sector Economics&Finance; Decentralization; ICT Policy and Strategies; Health Economics&Finance; Environmental Economics&Policies; Public Sector Economics&Finance; Town Water Supply and Sanitation; ICT Policy and Strategies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-08-01
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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