In its May 2007 report, ‘Infrastructure to 2030′, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) cautioned both member and non-member states on what it sees as the increasing demand for infrastructure coupled with the Government’s limited ability to finance it. The OECD report identified the infrastructure needs of various countries and listed a series of recommendations on how countries could strategically develop their infrastructure. The report also stressed that countries must facilitate private sector involvement in the funding of infrastructure in order to satisfy the increasing demand on existing infrastructure and need for new infrastructure.
The term ‘infrastructure’ has been expanding to capture not just the traditional concession projects that have a government off-take arrangement, such as public-private partnerships/private finance initiative (PPP/PFI) schools, prisons, toll roads and hospital projects, but also almost any standalone monopolistic or quasi-monopolistic asset or group of assets such as airports, ports or telecommunications networks.
