Developing electric power : thirty years of World Bank experience

The purpose of this book is to describe and extract some lessons from the World Bank's lending for electric power development, to review not only the objectives the Bank has deemed important for the success of its operations in this field, but also the policies and methods it has followed to reach those objectives, and to provide some assessment of the results. The Bank is the world's largest development agency and can reasonably claim to be the most influential. It is known to have high standards of project appraisal. It also has policies and requirements that it tries to ensure are followed in the execution and operation of the projects it finances. It has gathered experience over more than thirty years with lending operations in every part of the Third World. It claims that its contribution to developing countries is not confined to the funds it makes available but that it also strengthens its borrowers' ability to carry out projects; that is, "institution building" is an important aspect of its work. What then is the result of all this activity? What policies has if followed? How well have they achieved their objective, and what does this indicate about the best methods to develop electric power? This book tries to answer, or to provide the material for an answer, to these kind of questions.