Introducing the Urban Water Catalyst Fund

How do we make the urban water utility sector more bankable? This is a crucial challenge. The need for investment is there, and the willingness to invest is there, but there are simply not enough investible opportunities. That is largely because the utilities that need the money most are also those with the weakest record of operational performance. There is a strong risk that any money advanced to these utilities will leak out due to the inadequacy of the governance and management, and fail to deliver the expected impact on SDG6.

The key idea animating the Urban Water Catalyst Fund is to use finance as an incentive to accelerate the turnaround of utilities and to make them bankable. The Fund brings together technical assistance and early stage funding to break the cycle of utility decline, giving the partner utilities the forward momentum they need to secure and deploy funding for large-scale infrastructure investment.

The objective of this workshop is to develop the strategy of the Fund so that it can best accelerate the deployment of capital in the urban water sector. We bring together utility success stories, the views of development finance institutions and the insight of key professionals involved in delivering SDG6. Together, we will debate the best way to fix under-performing utilities and apply that learning to shape the Fund as an effective solution to the problem of deploying capital to utilities.

Please note that places are limited. You can confirm your attendance by email to regina.rossmann@giz.de

Places are limited. Confirm your attendance to regina.rossmann@giz.de