PPIAF

One billion of the world’s poor lack access to clean water. Two billion lack access to electricity and adequate sanitation. And more than half have never used a telephone. Why this lack of access? In some cases these services are not available where the poor live. In others, services are available—but too expensive.

Developing countries are working to change this. As they do so, they want to explore all their options for bringing services—water, sanitation, electricity, transportation, telecommunications—and ensuring that they are safe, reliable, efficient, and affordable.

Through technical assistance grants, PPIAF helps governments design innovative policies for serving poor communities. It also supported early work to develop and pilot output-based subsidy approaches as alternatives to the paradigm of full cost recovery popular in the late 1990s. These approaches are gaining broad acceptance as a more appropriate response to limited access to services for the poor. They are being developed through the Global Partnership on Output-Based Aid and increasingly mainstreamed by the International Development Association and other donors.

In providing grants, PPIAF gives priority to countries, sectors, and types of activities where its assistance directly supports infrastructure strategies that aim to alleviate poverty by increasing access to services for poor people at affordable prices. Today two-thirds of PPIAF support goes to low-income countries, with nearly 50 percent directed to activities in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Global Knowledge
Small-scale service providers are filling the gap left by public utilities in many African countries, in small towns and in rural and periurban areas. To shed light on their role, PPIAF initiated a global survey of small-scale providers of water supply and electricity. The survey identified more than 10,000 informal operators in 49 countries.
These small-scale providers often have trouble accessing finance. To help, PPIAF is supporting a program in Kenya that brings together community-based organiza¬tions and microlenders to provide better water services to the poor—while generating lessons for similar initiatives.

Technical Assistance
PPIAF has pioneered pro-poor approaches in many sectors.

• In Peru a PPIAF grant helped the government bring telecommunications services to low-income rural areas through a universal access fund. The fund provided incentives for private companies to extend services to these areas. Similar funds have been adopted in 10 countries in Latin America as well as countries elsewhere, including Ghana, Tanzania, and Uganda.
  
• In Guatemala PPIAF is supporting a credit enhancement mechanism to mobilize commercial bank financing for basic infrastructure in poor communities.

• In India PPIAF is providing the West Bengal state government with funding for a pilot to create a geographic information system (GIS) database. GIS maps will show income levels, people’s access to infrastructure, and agricultural and environmental conditions across the state. The maps will help the government and other stakeholders design evidence-based policies and local development programs.