The Power of Public Investment Management

Book excerpt: Public resources--if invested well in public infrastructure and services--can catalyze private and community e orts and unleash an inclusive growth and development process. But too often public projects are selectedto support political patronage, poorly designed, underfunded, long delayed, very costly, or badly implemented, with little bene t to the population. This is a critical challenge for many countries, both rich and poor. This book identi es eight key institutional features that countries need to adopt to ensure that public investments support growth and development. The Power of Public Investment Management provides a clear, nontechnical discussion on approaches to improving project appraisal, disciplining political intervention in project selection, dealing with uncertainty (an issue that is likely to grow in importance with the e ects of climate change), integrating procurement skills into project design and implementation, and managing the decision on public-private partnerships. Byproviding a simple but comprehensive framework and global experience, the book provides policy makers the guidance to adopt good functional principles in the design of institutions to strengthen public investment management.