Morocco charted its own distinctive path of power sector reform. It selectively introduced private sector participation for generation capacity expansion and electricity distribution, while retaining a strong, state-owned and vertically-integrated national power utility operating as a single...

The challenge of power sector reform in the Arab Republic of Egypt has long been dominated by extremely high subsidies, with prices set well below the costs of supply. These subsidies have taken a variety of forms: explicit subsidies in the government budget, implicit subsidies in the...

Vietnam's power sector has developed rapidly since the 1990s to become a top performer among developing countries. This success has occurred mostly under a state-owned utility, Electricity Vietnam. Select market-oriented reforms to date have also had some positive impact. By the late 1990s, the...

Two successive waves of reform have fundamentally altered the structure and organization of Kenya's vibrant power sector, which boasts a tradition of strong technical and commercial performance. In the first wave-beginning in 1996 and largely donor-driven-policy and regulatory functions were...

Uganda's power sector structure is among the most sophisticated in Sub-Saharan Africa, and Uganda is one of only a handful of countries in the region where tariffs are close to being cost reflective. While reforms were swift and comprehensive, following the 1999 Electricity Act, significant...

Pakistan's power sector underwent a substantial, if protracted, reform process. Beginning with an independent power producer program in 1994, the full unbundling of the national vertically integrated power and water utility, the Water and Power Development Authority, and the establishment of a...

The Philippines power sector underwent a substantial and largely complete reform process. Following a severe shortage of supply in the late 1980s and the Asian Financial crisis of 1997, which made the dollar-denominated debt of the National Power Corporation extremely burdensome, the Electric...

Improving electricity access in low-income countries is a challenging problem because of the high costs of grid extension and low demand for grid electricity in rural areas. This study elucidates these constraints by analyzing poor households' willingness-to-pay for different types of...