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Lessons for the Urban Century : Decentralized Infrastructure Finance in the World BankThis book takes a look at the past to
 gain insights for the future. Nearly 30 years ago, when the
 world urban population was only about half of the 3 billion
 that it is today, when most Less Developed Countries (LDCs)
 were primarily rural, and before the wave of
 decentralization of the 1980s and 1990s, the World Bank
 developed an instrument with great potential. The key
 characteristics of this instrument, the Urban Infrastructure
 Fund (UIF), are several. It provides finance for an array of
 urban services, not just one sector, such as water and
 sanitation, leaving flexibility for local beneficiaries to
 set their priorities. UIF projects operate in more than one
 city. Perhaps the most important distinctive feature is that
 these projects use local institutions to do the work of
 identifying, appraising and channeling finance to
 subnational entities (municipalities, local utilities, or
 community groups) on behalf of the World Bank. This
 arrangement makes it feasible to reach beyond the major
 capitals or business centers such as Chongqing, Mumbai, or
 Sao Paulo, or even regional capitals, to fund much smaller
 subprojects, suited to the needs and capacities of smaller
 cities and towns, because local agents are tasked with
 identifying and appraising these projects. Delegating these
 functions makes it practicable not only for a large
 International Financial Institution (IFI) such as the World
 Bank but also for national governments to reach small
 municipalities. Providing support to large numbers of
 municipalities with relatively small investment needs is a
 complex task, but it is fundamental to scaling up beyond
 small pilot projects to programs improving urban services countrywide.
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Financing Cities : Fiscal Responsibility and Urban Infrastructure in Brazil, China, India, Poland and South AfricaThis book, Financing cities, emphasized case studies on different topics to look at the interactions of a range of variables and factors and to see how they fit together. Rather than require each case to follow the same format, the authors have structured their papers around the issues that matter most from their perspective in addressing the topic in hand. The first part of this book presents case studies describing the framework established at the national level to promote urban infrastructure finance while ensuring fiscal discipline and reviewing recent experience as well as future challenges. The subjects covered include the impact of political and fiscal decentralization, limitations on borrowing, managing moral hazard, the role of the financial sector, the achieving of the right balance between stringent controls and encouragement of local governments taking responsibility for fiscal discipline coupled with market discipline. The cases featured include three of the world's largest decentralized nations; together the five countries featured in the conference account for nearly a third of the world's urban population. Part I includes case studies for each of the five countries featured in the conference: Brazil (Chapter 1), China (Chapter 2), India (Chapter 3), Poland (Chapter 4) and South Africa (Chapter 5). Part II then shifts from the frameworks for fiscal discipline to urban infrastructure investments and the strategies used to mobilize investment funding. Chapters 6 and 7 examine the financing strategies for urban infrastructure in Shanghai and Brazil respectively. The next two chapters focus on specialized intermediaries offering urban infrastructure finance in cities. One is a fully private venture in South Africa (Chapter 9) while the other, in Tamil Nadu, India (Chapter 8), is a spin-off of a government fund with minority private ownership. The final two chapters examine experiences with two other mechanisms for mobilizing funding for infrastructure investments from the private sector, land leasing and sales (Chapter 10) and private participation in infrastructure operations (Chapter 11).
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The Urban Development Investment Corporations (UDICs) in Chongqing, ChinaUrban Development Investment
 Corporations (UDICs) have over the years become the central
 pillar in the local government drive to build infrastructure
 in China, where local governments are not allowed to engage
 in direct market borrowing. UDICs were established during
 the early 1990s when local governments were under great
 pressure to both build municipal infrastructure and to
 reform the role of the government in infrastructure
 development. The UDIC model provided the local governments
 with a corporate government structure to borrow from the
 market and quickly develop infrastructure. They are treated
 as municipal corporations under the Company Law of the
 Peoples' Republic of China (PRC). The law does not
 clarify the relationship between UDICs and the local
 government, including the limits of the financial liability
 of the local governments vis-a-vis UDICs. The Government of
 China (GOC) agencies expect that the World Bank (WB)
 Technical Assistance Report (TAR), based on the detailed
 analysis of the financial operations of a selected UDIC in
 Chongqing, will offer critical technical assistance to the
 Chongqing Municipal Government (CMG), which can also be
 shared with other Chinese cities. The GOC agencies realize
 that this TAR is the first step in the right direction, in
 that it will specifically address the needs of a
 reform-minded municipal government and clarify one UDIC
 model in detail. It is anticipated that similar efforts can
 be undertaken in the coming years with other reform-minded
 and high-priority cities that are employing different models
 of UDIC to finance municipal infrastructure.