Session Summary

This session featured a presentation and Q&A on city financing frameworks, leveraging modalities, borrowing instruments, rapid capital assessments, capital mobilization, transaction structures and CRP city engagements. Participants were reminded that financing frameworks should distinguish between financing and funding, and that different modes of finance acquisition led to different outcomes for city finances and revenues, as did loan versus bond-based borrowing. The main obstacles to financing urban resilience were given as:

• City government’s lack of funds to invest in resilience infrastructure
• Lack of projects and investments attractive to private finance
• Limited market mechanisms to enable flow of funds from private investors to cities

The remainder of the Q&A looked at improving credit worthiness and different options for borrowing, and noted that the CRP offered a paradigm shift in financing infrastructure and closing infrastructure gaps.