IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/6683.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Unlocking land values for urban infrastructure finance : international experience -- considerations for Indian policy

Author

Listed:
  • Peterson, George E.

Abstract

Despite strong economic growth, investment in basic urban infrastructure -- water supply, wastewater removal and treatment, roads, and other capital-intensive systems -- has failed to keep pace with urban growth, leaving a critical urban infrastructure deficit. At the same time, urban lands in these many developing countries are among the most expensive in the world. Much of this land is owned by public authorities. Significant parts of it lie vacant, unused for public service provision or inappropriate for conversion to higher-valued economic activity. A composite public-sector balance sheet for India's urban areas would show an asset mix strong on public-sector landholdings but weak on infrastructure. This raises the following questions: Can some excess public-sector land be exchanged for infrastructure, in a manner that is politically acceptable and economically efficient? Can public land sales be a realistic source of finance for critically needed urban infrastructure investment? This paper considers the policy context that has shaped different land-disposal and earmarking initiatives, provides details about the actual workings of institutions, and examines international experience in infrastructure investment. This study contributes to the consultative process underway in India to consider strategies to unlock public land values to help finance urban infrastructure investment.

Suggested Citation

  • Peterson, George E., 2013. "Unlocking land values for urban infrastructure finance : international experience -- considerations for Indian policy," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6683, The World Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6683
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2013/10/31/000158349_20131031083447/Rendered/PDF/WPS6683.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Public Sector Economics; Public Sector Management and Reform; Municipal Financial Management; Debt Markets; Regional Governance;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6683. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.