Financing for rural electrification

Financing rural electrification projects successfully requires the understanding and implementation of certain factors connected wholly or partly to the make-up and functionality of the project. Among these factors are aspects related to project affordability, reliability, sustainability, and present as well as future development. In this paper, a variety of basic financing aspects have been discussed and examined, regardless of the original aim(s) and objective(s) of the project, e.g. whether for the purpose of establishing off-grid electricity supply (in the form of renewable energy system) and/or to extend the supply from the national grid to the town or the village concerned. For these reasons, a number of financial aspects, as well as financial institutes/organisations with their resources and structures, have been examined and discussed. The purpose behind the discussion is simply to provide a window to the world of finance, in particular where rural electrification is concerned. This kind of approach is part of a wider mechanism to help in speeding-up rural electrification in the countryside of the developing countries, in general, and South Asia, in particular.