Briefing Paper

Matchmaking Finance and Infrastructure

The world economy – and emerging market and developing economies in particular – display a gap between infrastructure needs and its finance (Canuto, 2014). On the one hand, infrastructure investment has fallen far short of what would be necessary to support potential growth. On the other hand, abundant financial resources in world markets have been facing very low and decreasing interest rates, whereas opportunities of higher return from potential infrastructure assets are missed. Here we approach how a better match between private sector finance and infrastructure can be obtained if properly structured projects are developed, with risks and returns distributed in accordance with different incentives of stakeholders.