Background
The municipal infrastructure in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia (together, the “Western Balkans”) is obsolete and in many cases is the cause of health and environmental concerns. There is a significant backlog of investments across all municipal sub-sectors, including water, wastewater, district heating, urban transport, municipal roads and other. A number of municipalities, particularly the small and medium sized, are not able to attract the necessary financing from the commercial banking sector due to: (i) lack of capacity of the cities to prepare suitable projects; and (ii) limited appetite of the commercial banks to take municipal risk. Reaching out a wider number of municipalities in the Western Balkans requires the development of a completely new dedicated instrument with the mandate to: (i) improve the long term sustainability in municipal services and transition impact in these markets and (ii) develop a commercial banking market for municipal lending by enhancing the skills of the commercial banks to analyse and take municipal risk.
The main objective of the assignment
In order to ensure that MIDF is a professionally managed and market-oriented financing fund, the Fund has decided that its investment management should be entrusted to an experienced Investment Manager.
The investment management assignment will have two interrelated responsibilities, as further detailed in the full Invitation for Expressions of Interest sent upon demand:
- Full investment management services for MIDF: under the oversight of the Investment Committee and Board of Directors and within the
framework of a MIDF investment management agreement.
- Provision of technical assistance services, essentially: provision of technical assistance services to local banks in identifying, evaluating,
negotiating and structuring opportunities for lending to Ultimate Borrowers as defined in the Issue Document of the Fund according to the
TA Guidelines and identification, assessment, selection and appointing of consultants and/or consulting firms which shall provide technical
assistance services to the Ultimate Borrowers of the Fund.
Deadline: 04 March 2013