a b s t r a c tThis paper presents data on 76 partial credit guarantee schemes across 46 developed and developing countries. Based on theory, we discuss different organizational features of credit guarantee schemes and their variation across countries. We focus on the respective role of government and private sector and different pricing and risk reduction tools and how they are correlated across countries. We find that government has an important role to play in funding and management, but less so in risk assessment and recovery. There is a surprisingly low use of risk-based pricing and limited use of risk management mechanisms.

More than half of the world's population now lives in urban areas. The difficulties involved in providing new urban residents with a wide variety of services reveal a new face of poverty, one in which urban communities cannot access or afford basic modern energy services for their development and empowerment. As an enabler of development processes, access to electricity in urban and peri-urban contexts plays a key role in providing possibilities and solutions to the urban poor. Energy poverty is no longer a rural-only phenomenon, and a concerted effort is needed to find solutions. Taking this into account, the Global Network on Energy for Sustainable Development (GNESD) initiated the Urban Peri-Urban Energy Access (UPEA) project in 2006. The objective of this study was to understand the barriers to energy access in the context of the urban poor in seven countries. Barriers from both the supply and demand sides for energy were investigated. Factors such as a lack of institutional coordination, weak alignment between energy policies and urban planning, and insufficient financial and social incentives appear to play key roles in constraining access to electricity for the urban poor. Overcoming these barriers will require innovative solutions in policies, decision-making, financing, multi-stakeholder dialogs, social inclusion, international cooperation, and knowledge sharing regarding good practices.

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

BIS Working Papers are written by members of the Monetary and Economic Department of the Bank for International Settlements, and from time to time by other economists, and are published by the Bank. The papers are on subjects of topical interest and are technical in character. The views expressed in them are those of their authors and not necessarily the views of the BIS. This publication is available on the BIS website (www.bis.org).

The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the changes in the calculation of minimum regulatory capital requirements for credit risk that have been drafted by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (Basel II). Even though the revised credit capital rules represent a dramatic change compared to Basel I, it is shown that Basel II merely seeks to codify (albeit incompletely) existing good practices in bank risk measurement. However, its effective implementation in many developing countries is hindered by fundamental weaknesses in financial infrastructure that will need to be addressed as a priority.