The Global Infrastructure Project Pipeline: Linking private investors with public infrastructure projects

In 2014, the Brisbane G20 Leaders’ Summit tasked its newly announced Global Infrastructure Hub with ensuring there is a “comprehensive, open-source project pipeline database, connected to national and multilateral development bank databases, to help match potential investors with projects.”
 
The G20, based on advice from the B20 (a private sector forum) had recognized a key issue for the private sector: the lack of clear and consistent early stage information on government infrastructure projects across the globe.
 
Private investors armed with billions of dollars were being hamstrung by a lack of useful and informative data to guide their planning for investments.

The private sector was calling for a single, consolidated, and standardized global pipeline of projects to provide:

• Advance visibility of upcoming projects to allow early and proper preparation
• Comparability of projects across countries
• Clarity on how projects were progressing from project conception to start of operations, especially in the pre-procurement phases

A pipeline that addressed these criteria would help investors understand what stage of development projects were at, and what underlying information supported the projects in order to determine where to focus their attention and to deploy resources and capital.
 
And significantly, a global project pipeline database would provide the platform for governments to produce consistent and comparable information about projects in their country, allowing countries to present and effectively market their projects to the private sector at an early stage.
 
In December 2016 this vision materialized when the GI Hub launched its Global Infrastructure Project Pipeline, a free, interactive online platform listing details of projects initially from eight countries.

The Pipeline is an intuitive online tool allowing users to access and search information by multi-field criteria including region, country, sector or sub-sector, project stage, and project value. The Pipeline is constructed into eight standard sequential stages to track the development and progression of projects from their initial conception to operation. 
 
The format and content of the Pipeline is a direct result of the GI Hub’s comprehensive research and consultation to establish the key requirements of the private sectors.
 
Over several months last year, the GI Hub consulted specifically with private sector infrastructure participants on the information and structure of a global pipeline in order to ensure that the planned Pipeline addressed their needs. 

The model for the platform is unique: governments upload their project details to the platform, and then update the project fields as projects progress. Registered users access the data through the multi-field criteria.

The Pipeline will rely on information inputted directly by government bodies that will take responsibility for the integrity and accuracy of information - in contrast to commercial databases that rely on public information.

Within weeks of being launched, the pipeline had attracted significant interest from the infrastructure community. To date more than 600 individual organizations (many with multiple individual users) across 85 countries have registered for the Pipeline.  The private sector accounts for approximately 70% of users.
 
At launch, Australia, Chile, China, Colombia, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, and Uruguay listed a total of 44 projects on the platform with a combined total disclosed value of almost $40 billion.

Over time, as more people become aware of the Pipeline and its purpose, it is expected both the number of countries represented and the amount of projects listed will grow, and it will become part of the infrastructure landscape and a valuable resource for both private investors, and governments seeking to attract investment for their infrastructure projects.
 
As part of their work in catalyzing private sector financing into infrastructure projects, the multilateral development Banks (MDBs) can play an important role by encouraging governments to list appropriate projects on the Pipeline for the attention of the private sector.
 
The Pipeline is one practical way in which the GI Hub is attempting to bring together the public and private sectors to solve the world’s infrastructure challenges.
 
Clike here to register to access the free Project Pipeline.

 
Disclaimer: The content of this blog does not necessarily reflect the views of the World Bank Group, its Board of Executive Directors, staff or the governments it represents. The World Bank Group does not guarantee the accuracy of the data, findings, or analysis in this post.