High on the agenda of governments around the world is the desire to develop their country's infrastructure. Hand in hand with this desire is the challenge of deciding how best to fund this development: determining what is affordable through the public purse and what contribution private finance might make. The working premise is that demand will always outstrip what governments can afford. Hence, there will always be a role for private finance to help bridge this financing gap-indeed, there are already many infrastructure developments that are privately financed.
Before exploring in detail the challenges and opportunities of involving private finance, this chapter gives some background to the subject, namely:
• the definition of infrastructure
• the drivers of demand for infrastructure
• the investment need
• the impact of current fiscal stimulus programs