The experience of semi-formal insfrastructure finance in developing countries: proposals for Brazil and LAtin America by André Castro Carvalho (2013).
This paper has the purpose of analyzing the role of civil society in funding and providing infrastructure projects in developing countries. Considering that local associations around the world have been directly engaged on some infrastructure projects – some scholars define it as “semi-formal finance” –, the intention is to demonstrate that the experiences on such arrangements in developing countries have been responsible for fostering infrastructure investments in the poorer regions where the government is more absent. Based upon legal, economic and social aspects, this paper aims to contribute to a broader debate for the development of infrastructure in emerging countries. Therefore, the introduction deals with new approaches in public administration, as well as the actual broader concept of privatization. Next, I assume that the Third Sector has a great role in this process, but the current regulation in Brazil serves to prevent such arrangements. In the last section, the objective is to argue that civil society, even without the help of organized entities such NGOs, may have a strong role on such semi-formal finance arrangements in Brazil: in many developing countries, informal arrangements were responsible for boost small infrastructures in poor regions. The conclusion is that, under a more social approach, the legal and economic mechanisms in developing countries are able to consider such arrangements in the benefit of their development.
