Tharman unveils 3 initiatives to draw institutions to infrastructure

Singapore

SINGAPORE'S Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam on Tuesday launched three initiatives to make infrastructure investment a more regular feature in the asset allocation of institutional investors.

This is on top of what most regional governments are already doing, which is ensuring bankable projects and stretching public dollars to fund what they can, he said in his keynote opening address at the sixth World Bank-Singapore Infrastructure Finance Summit.

The first initiative is: Singapore wants to better define and detail non-commercial risks (for example, political risks) which have thus far remained quite open-ended in many infrastructure project contracts.

The World Bank is preparing a report on recommended public-private partnership (PPP) contractual provisions, which provide a consistent language for important protection clauses in PPP documentation - pertaining to things such as termination, force majeure and…