Private Enterprise and Financial Markets > Infrastructure and Financial Markets > Infrastructure
Energy
The Bank has been the main source of multilateral financing for the energy sector in the region, in particular for electricity, and has been seeing it through a difficult process of transition to the new model of service deliver based on competition and private sector participation. However, recognizing that in order to continue acting as the sector's partner, the Bank has to adapt to changing circumstances, a new Energy Strategy was approved in March 2000. This strategy, the result of careful technical work performed at the Bank over the last three years, highlights the nature of the main challenges facing the region's energy sector (which is undergoing radical structural change) to provide an input that is essential to the development and well-being of communities. These challenges (the consolidation of structural reforms, the extension of modern energy options to all citizens on affordable terms, the development of patterns of energy production and consumption that are environmentally friendly, the integration of regional energy markets, and the mobilization of capital) reflect how complex it is to formulate energy policies. Energy is a main factor in all of the region's priority development areas: social reform, reform of the State, and competitiveness.
Thus, the strategy seeks four basic goals. First, to realign all sector activities around support for the consolidation of reforms through a program mutually agreed with the country. Second, to provide comprehensive support for the development of new energy markets emerging as a result of the reforms, meeting their credit needs through the instruments and units best suited to the characteristics of each market. Third, to provide an overall approach to energy problems that addresses supply and demand. Finally, in agreement as mandated in the Bank's Institutional Strategy, to foster the development of new financial instruments to help develop the emerging energy markets.
One key element of the Strategy is the dissemination of the Bank's efforts in its implementation and other relevant information of interest to sector practitioners. With this purpose in mind, this page will permit easy access to the documentation used in the elaboration of the strategy and to the current and past research on energy sector reform.
Last updated: 01/16/07
