Asian water management needs to clean up its act to attract investors

摘要

I have mentioned previously in these pages that the pandemic has dealt a heavy blow to government budgets, thanks to the new costs of simply keeping people alive or employed. Much money has been diverted from financing infrastructure projects, including water. With these challenges in mind, many governments in Asia, often already in need of significant investment in their water infrastructure, will turn infrastructure projects into an asset class that can attract diverse types of institutional investors. These institutional investors are often seeking to prioritise environmental or sustainability considerations as part of their decision calculus, with this reasonably new theme being in vogue, especially among Wall Street and European investors in the past few years.