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Last data update: July, 2008 |
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Frequently Asked Questions
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This page offers answers to frequently-asked questions on Private Participation
in Infrastructure Projects data and methodology.
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The information stored in the Private Participation in Infrastructure database is
downloadable to HTML, Excel, or Word files through snapshot reports for 2004, the
latest year for which there is available data, or customized reports. Excel and
Word downloads are made available for ease of data manipulation. If a project has
multiple characteristics or entries in the database then the project will repeat
as many times as entries in the Excel file. For example, a project with two types
of technologies will be listed twice in the Excel file with the each technology
listed in one line. However, in the Word files, the project is listed only once.
Alternatively, a simplified version of the database can be downloaded as a Microsoft
Access file.
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The PPI Project Database records total investment in infrastructure projects with
private participation, not private investment alone. Investment commitments include
expenditures on facility expansion, divestiture revenues, and license or canon fees.
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Recording information on public investment in infrastructure projects, on a reliable
and consistent basis, would require not only collecting public investment data disaggregated
at sector level for each developing country but also having a common methodology
for developing economies on what and how data are collected. Currently most countries
do not report data on public investment disaggregated at the sector level nor do
they use similar methodologies to collect public investment data.
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The Database focuses on projects with private participation in infrastructure and
therefore records infrastructure projects that are owned or managed by private companies.
These projects may or may have not World Bank involvement. In addition, there are
infrastructure projects in developing countries supported by the World Bank that
do not have private sector participation and therefore are not included in the PPI
Project Database. To find out about the World Bank Groups involvement in infrastructure
projects in developing countries visit the World Banks
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The Database records the involvement of the World Bank Group (IBRD,
IDA,
IFC, or
MIGA) in infrastructure projects with private participation in low-
and middle-income countries as defined in the Databases methodology for multilateral bank support
through direct loans to project companies, equity participation, and guarantees.
Other types of World Bank involvement such as technical and financial assistance
for the design, tender, and monitoring of infrastructure projects with private participation,
advice on PPI reforms, sector reform loans and others types of support are not recorded
by the Database.
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There are three primary reasons that explain the differences. First, investment
figures in the Database are recorded in nominal terms, while investment data for
the listed publications on trends in PPI until 2003 had been adjusted by the US CPI using the
last year of available data as the base year. However, this practice was changed
in July 2005. Since then, listed publications based on the database report investment
data in nominal US dollars. The new presentation format lowered significantly the
published figures without any major change in the original data. For instance in
the
note reviewing the 2003 activity reported the 1997 investment peak, in 2003
US dollars, at $130.9 billion, while the current data set reports that peak, in nominal terms, at US$114.1 billion. Second, the records of
projects that reached financial closure before 2005 were revised and some new projects for this period
were added while others were deleted during the 2005 update of the Database when
additional information became available. The Database has a conservative approach
for entering projects and when it is not clear if an infrastructure project has
private participation or reached financial closure at the time of the update, the
project is not entered into the database until more accurate information is obtained.
The 2005 update includes
some upward revisions from 1995 to 2004, due to the adjustments of investments in
telecommunications projects in Europe and Central Asia, in transport
projects in Latin America and South Asia, and in water projects in East Asia. The
2005 update also included downward revision in telecommunications in Sub-Saharan Africa (due to the exclusion of South African Telkom from the database) and in the
Middle East and North Africa. Third,
classification of some countries has changed over time -- see Glossary for
definition of
country income group and IDA status. The changes between the country classification
used in 2004 and 2005 updates are:
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Country
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2004 update
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2005 update
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Angola
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Low |
Lower middle income |
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Equatorial Guinea |
Low |
Upper middle income |
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Russian Federation |
Lower middle income |
Upper middle income |
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Saudi Arabia |
Upper middle income |
High income
(excluded from the Database) |
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South Africa |
Lower middle income |
Upper middle income |
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Turkey
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Lower middle income |
Upper middle income |
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Reports from the PPI Project Database can generate different results depending on
the type of report selected. For aggregated data, the reports with the cleanest
totals are the most general ones:
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Data aggregated only by investment year (or financial closure) and primary
sector
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Data aggregated only by investment year (or financial closure) and type
of PPI
The discrepancies in total investment numbers with other reports (such as the
one including country, region, subsector, or segment) are caused by the fact that
some projects have more than one country, region, sector, subsector or segment assigned
to them. In those cases the project is included in each relevant country, region,
sector, subsector or segment.
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The definition of financial closure varies among types of private participation.
For greenfield projects and concessions, financial closure is defined as the existence
of a legally binding commitment of equity holders or debt financiers to provide
or mobilize funding for the project. The funding must account for a significant
part of the project cost, securing the construction of the facility. For management
and lease contracts, a contract authorizing the commencement of management or lease
service must exist. For divestitures, the equity holders must have a legally binding
commitment to acquire the assets of the facility. The Database includes only projects
that have reached financial closure.
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For most projects the Database records investment commitments in the year of financial
closure. However, where divestitures are phased or where investment requirements
are defined by commitments on service coverage and quality and data are available
(such as for large privatized electricity and telecommunications companies), the
investments are recorded in the years in which the transactions took place.
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No. Investment and other information on canceled projects are maintained in the
database and are only modified when the project is re-awarded.
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