Learning from Latin America
The challenge to create structures so that pension funds can invest in local infrastructure projects and help develop the capital markets has led to some innovative ideas across Latin America. There are lessons for African regulators of pensions and social security as well as for those promoting public-private partnerships for a full range of African infrastructure, including roads, bridges, telecoms, hospitals and house. Here are a couple of examples (from a 2017 World Bank paper by Fiona Stewart, Romain Despalins and Inna Remizova).
Mexico’s CKDs (Certificados de Capital de Desarrollo) securities are traded on the Mexican Stock Exchange (Mexican Bolsa/BMV) and were created in July 2009 with the mandatory pension funds (Siefores) as their key source of capital. CKDs are designed to boost infrastructure projects from ports to electricity and water, and real estate amounted to 30% of the total since 2009. Regulator CONSAR has deregulated investment restrictions for Siefores in stages to allow them to invest into private equity, real estate and infrastructure projects through CKDs.
Peruvian funds have created trust structures to allow pension funds to invest in infrastructure projects. The World Bank has helped Columbia develop infrastructure debt funds which pension funds can invest into.
Excellent recent research
Several excellent papers have been published this year. Here are some of them, with links to their sources.
- Maurer, Klaus (April 2017). “Mobilization of of Long-term Savings for Infrastructure Financing in Africa”. Study prepared for Germany’s Study prepared for Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Bonn. Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, available here. Sources include 2 articles on this blog in Feb 2017 and in Mar 2015!
- PricewaterhouseCoopers (2017). “Africa Asset Management 2020”. PwC. Download here.
- RisCura (current). Bright Africa. Cape Town. RisCura. The report was published in 2015 but the website is interactive and updated, check out the excellent information and stats here.
- Stewart, Fiona, Romain Despalins and Inna Remizova (July 2017). “Pension Funds, Capital Markets, and the Power of Diversification”. Policy Research Working Paper. Washington, DC. World Bank Group. Download via here.
- Sy Amadou (Mar 2017). “Leveraging African Pension Funds for Financing Infrastructure Development”. Washington, DC. African Growth Initiative of The Brookings Institution with NEPAD and the United Nations Office of the Special Advisor on Africa (OSAA). Available from Brookings.
Another good resource is African Development Bank’s Making Finance Work For Africa (MFW4A).
