Blog » City Creditworthiness Academy. Seoul, South Korea. April 21-26, 2014.

City Creditworthiness Academy. Seoul, South Korea. April 21-26, 2014.

Created Dec 19 2013, 3:35 PM by Daniel N. Greenlee
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The Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) and the World Bank's Low-Carbon Livable Cities Initiative, in collaboration with the C40 Network, the Korea Development Institute (KDI) and the Korean Green Growth Trust Fund (KGGTF), are pleased to announce the second City Creditworthiness Academy to be held in Seoul, South Korea, on April 21-25, 2014. The City Creditworthiness Academy will assist senior financial officials from sub-national governments and public enterprises across the East Asia Region to master the underpinnings of creditworthiness and to develop an action plan to improve their creditworthiness and access to finance for climate-related infrastructure.

Follow on support to help cities implement the action plan will be provided to selected participants after the Academy under the broader City Creditworthiness Program supported by all sponsors. The Program assists cities to improve their creditworthiness to enable them to access financing for low-carbon infrastructure projects.

The agenda of the City Creditworthiness Academy offers an intense set of training modules ranging from revenue management to climate smart capital investment planning, from debt financing options to the enabling environment for sub-national finance. The training emphasizes peer-to-peer learning and the practitioners' perspective. Best practices from the East Asia Region and from across the world will be presented and discussed. Site visits will also be organized by KDI.

Prior to attending the City Creditworthiness Academy, prospective participants will be required to submit a questionnaire on their entities' basic preparedness for debt financing. The responses will be used to inform the final design of the curriculum and to assign participants to specific discussion groups during the Academy. Participants should be sufficiently proficient in English as all activities and discussions will be led in English without translation services. An online forum will be activated prior to the Academy to support the community of practice among all participants. The forum is expected to serve its members also after the event and will enable participants to contact participants from prior and future Academies from around the world.

The inaugural City Creditworthiness Academy was held in Nairobi, Kenya in October 2013 with 54 financial officers from ten African countries participating. Several of the participants described their experience and the challenges facing their cities in a World Bank feature story.

All logistical details will be specified in due course and lodging will be covered. A limited amount of funds will be available for participant travel subsidies. Participants should indicate in their application if they wish to apply for subsidy funds. Requests for travel subsidies will be considered on the basis of need and merit.

Interested participants should complete the application form and send it to Lauren Wilson (lwilson1@worldbank.org). Please refer any questions about the City Creditworthiness Academy to Lauren.

About the partners:

  • PPIAF is a multi-donor trust fund housed at the World Bank that provides technical assistance to governments to support the creation of a sound enabling environment for private sector participation in basic infrastructure services. Through its Sub-National Technical Assistance (SNTA) program, PPIAF also helps sub-national entities access market-based financing without sovereign guarantees. The objective of the program is to improve the borrowing capacity of local governments and utilities by providing financing for credit ratings, creditworthiness enhancement programs, assistance in the preparation of financing without sovereign guarantees, and for knowledge generation and dissemination.
  • The World Bank's Low-Carbon Livable Cities Initiative support cities in developing countries in their efforts to plan low-carbon, climate-smart development and their access to financing to implement these plans. The initiative aims to reach 300 of the largest developing country cities in the next four years. It offers a comprehensive suite of tools and activities tailored to cities' specific needs and level of progress on their climate-smart development path, ranging from greenhouse gas inventories and assessments to low-carbon investment planning and financing solutions.
  • The Korea Development Institute (KDI) School of Public Policy and Management aims to solidify Korea’s global leadership in the development field by furthering the Seoul Development Consensus for Shared Growth endorsed at the Seoul G20 Summit. Accumulated policy research and development consulting experience at KDI over the last four decades are valuable assets for the KDI School striving to become a world-class academic institution for development policy studies.
  • The Korean Green Growth Trust Fund (KGGTF) seeks to strengthen and expand the World Bank’s global green growth portfolio by tapping into expertise from Korea’s successful experience and investment through public and private resources with approach of operationalizing including green growth initiatives, strategies, and investment. The KGGTF seeks to mobilize World Bank Groups’ impact through programmatic activities such as knowledge creation, sharing, promotion and network development that supports the capacity of Bank’s clients to design plan, and implement green growth initiatives, strategies and investments.
  • C40 is a network of the world’s megacities taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. With a unique set of assets, the C40 works with participating cities to address climate risks and impacts locally and globally. C40 is committed to implementing meaningful and sustainable climate-related actions locally that will help address climate change globally.