Rapid growth in project finance, drivenby huge increases in liquidity, helped fuel the gains inprivate participation in infrastructure (PPI) in developingcountries in the past decade. But when the financial crisishit, the excess liquidity began to dry up as lenders backedaway from practices that had helped generate it. The effectsare already apparent in greater delays in financialclosures, more cancellations, and higher financing costs forPPI projects. If full recovery of the project finance markettakes much longer than expected, some of the measures thatare now being adopted to avoid shutting down projectpipelines might have unintended and very negative consequences.