Project Finance in Developing Countries: IFC's Lessons of Experience
"Project finance to developing countries surged in the decade before the Asian crisis ... The financial crisis that began in East Asia ... has brought a dramatic slowdown in this trend."\ Project finance structuring techniques were used to attract international financing for many large-scale projects, helping to meet investment needs in infrastructure and other sectors. However, the crisis in East Asia has created stresses and strains for many projects, raising concerns about the viability of...
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This report explores the changing face of project finance in developing markets. IFC, and more recently, other multilateral, bilateral, and export credit institutions have played a strong suportive role in bringing project finance to its current volumes. This role was highlighted in 1998, when these institutions sustained flows of an estimated $25 billion at a time when there was an abrupt decline in some types of private flows. IFc, in particular, was a pioneer of project finance in developing countries and has a unique depth of experience in this field, which spans more than 40 years in the practical implementation of some 2000 projects, many of them on a limited-recourse basis. Particularly in today ' s marketplace, IFC ' s ability to mobilize finance (both loan and equity for its own account and syndicated loans under its B-loan program), the strength of iis project appraisal capabilities, and its experience in structuring complex transactions in difficult environments have been reassuring to other participants and important to the successful financing of many projects. This report draws on IFC ' s experience in more than 230 greenfield projects costing upward of $30 billion that relied on project finance on a limited-recourse basis (see Appendix A). It opens with a brief description of the major international trends in project finance over the past two decades and then turns to the essential ingredients of successful project financing.
