Discussion of Infrastructure and Corporate Bond Markets in Asia

Almost every paper I have ever read on infrastructure finance focuses on the achievement of what market practitioners believe is the Holy Grail of infrastructure finance. As PwC (2013) has stated in a recent publication, ‘[a] logical infrastructure project debt market would use short-term bank debt markets e.g. construction finance, with refinancing into the long-term institutional markets as seen increasingly in the regulated infrastructure utilities and leveraged infrastructure acquisition markets’ (p 5). The reality is that the conversion rate from the high-risk construction phase to the capital market funding phase is relatively low – it is important to try to find out the reasons why and to attempt to rectify them.