Private Sector Participation in the Power Sector in Europe and Central Asia : Lessons from the Last Decade

Abstract

The Californian power crisis appears to have greatly rekindled the latent doubts on moving to more competitive market structures for such an essential service as electricity. The recent collapse of Enron and several other industrial giants, as well as doubts about the reliability of external audits (resulting, in particular, in the collapse of Arthur Anderson) and the slide in the stock values of AES and other companies has eroded the confidence in the institutional pillars of the market, such as corporate disclosure, external audit, and oversight by regulators and Security Exchange Commissions. Major energy investors, at least in North America, seem to be anxious to clean up their balance sheets to eliminate from their portfolio unprofitable and risky investments. Against this backdrop, the objective of this study is to review the experiences in the ECA regio