In most countries of the Global South, public finance and overseas development assistance is inadequate to meet the financial requirements to achieve the universal coverage of safely managed sanitation. Attracting commercial finance is therefore necessary to bridge the gap. This working paper identifies ten foundational issues related to the government or the sector, service providers, and the financers that undermine the sector’s ability to attract commercial finance. It ends with solutions at the three aforementioned levels for creating an enabling environment for commercial finance in the sector. It relies on examples from across the world to demonstrate how the solutions have been applied and found useful.
Who is this for and why?
This resource will be most useful for policy makers and organisations that support policy-making at the national government levels. It provides a menu of measures including institutional reforms, prioritising public finance, regulations, and ensuring performance and financial accountability of service providers, etc. that have helped attract commercial finance in other contexts. Policy makers can replicate, adapt and even improvise to make them work in their context.
The brief will also be useful for the development sector professionals especially those involved in transaction advisory services in supporting service providers become credit worthy. It will also be useful for working with higher governments to especially identifying and designing measures to attract commercial finance to the sector.
