Resource information
This report explores alternative ways to
finance municipal capital expenditures while maintaining
macroeconomic stability and fiscal discipline. It tries to
estimate the financing effort that municipalities will need
to make in order to meet the demand for infrastructure
services over the next five to 10 years, taking into account
the municipalities' expected resources from local
taxes, user charges, and intergovernmental transfers. The
report is organized into six chapters. The introduction
describes the overall problem, main issues, methodology, and
analytical framework. Chapter 2 explains the context under
which municipalities operate, and it identifies the main
financial trends in the sector. Chapter 3 discusses how to
increase municipal current savings to enable municipal
governments to finance investment and leverage borrowing.
Chapter 4 focuses how to ensure that the existing municipal
credit systems operate efficiently, that municipalities with
"good" projects find adequate long-term financing,
and that credit is allocated more by market rules and less
by political factors. Chapters 5 and 6 discusses how to
support the involvement of the private sector in the
financing of municipal infrastructure and in helping the
transition toward less regulated credit systems.
