Infrastructure Concessions, Information Flows, and Regulatory Risk

Regulators of concessions in newly privatized infrastructure sectors typically start the price control process with limited sectoral and corporate data. To move toward more realistic regulatory targets, they must ensure that this information base grows and that their ability to process it improves-a costly undertaking but worth the expense. Getting it right-with well-conceived rules, data, and methodologies-helps to avoid time-consuming regulatory disputes and contract renegotiations, reduce regulatory capture by the new private operator, and assess who gains and who loses from utility privatization. Getting it wrong can cause the concessionaire to operate and invest inefficiently, raise its cost of capital, and ultimately jeopardize privatization. This Note outlines the accounting requirements that a regulator should impose on new concessionaires to navigate these waters as smoothly as possible.