Municipal Infrastructure Financing provides an overview of the municipal finances and the extent of private sector involvement in the delivery of municipal services in selected Commonwealth developing countries. Four cities are examined in detail: Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, Kampala in Uganda, Dhaka in Bangladesh, and Karachi in Pakistan. The book presents some innovative options for alternative sources of municipal infrastructure financing, including attracting private sector participation, based on the successful experience of other developing countries. It also identifies the key challenges in municipal financing, and any broad institutional and financial strengthening measures that are required to tap alternative sources of financing for growth-oriented municipal investments.

Decentralisation is now taking place in the public administrations of most countries of the world. A critical determinant of the effective performance of local governments is finance – their ability to both mobilise financial resources and to use those resources effectively and efficiently.

This book explores the variety of methods used to ensure that fiscal decentralisation takes place alongside administrative decentralisation. It considers the range of revenue sources available, the design systems of intergovernmental transfers between central and local government, and the kinds of rules and procedures necessary to ensure that local governments use their financial resources appropriately.

The experiences described in this book will help local government managers, and national policymakers charged with local government finance issues, to ensure that they follow good practice in their own programmes of local government reform.