Infrastructure Equity in Emerging Markets: Long-Cycle Value

9 min read

Dariia VasylievaFounder & CEO, GETVISION

Infrastructure equity is ownership of the assets that move goods, people, power and water, paid for by the cash those services generate over 10, 20 or 30 years. In emerging markets it is the opposite of a speculative trade. The return comes from building or improving something a region needs, then running it well for long enough that the cash flows compound.

That is why we treat it as a separate discipline from venture capital and from land banking. A startup can triple in a year or disappear. A cold-storage hub, a mountain resort's utility network or a dry port next to a new rail line does neither. It earns slowly, and it keeps earning if the contract, the partners and the currency structure are right.

At GETVISION ASIA, infrastructure equity is one of three services: co-investing in tourism, transport, real estate, agro and essential regional infrastructure. This piece sets out how we think about the asset class, where the risk sits, and why long-cycle capital suits Central Asia now.

Key takeaways

Infrastructure equity is a claim on cash flows from an essential service, not a bet on land or construction prices.
The revenue contract matters more than the brownfield or greenfield label, because demand risk can make an operating asset riskier than a contracted new build.
In emerging markets the capital stack is usually built around DFIs and public partners, with private equity taking the slice that rewards operating skill.
The risks that destroy returns are currency, tariff and counterparty risk, and each needs a structural answer before signing.
Central Asia's state and DFI megaprojects form the spine, and the private opportunity sits in the assets that connect to it.

What infrastructure equity actually is

Infrastructure is any physical asset that delivers a service people and businesses cannot easily do without: transport, energy, water, storage, and the social assets communities depend on. Infrastructure equity means owning part of the company that holds that asset, usually alongside a developer, an operator and one or more lenders.

It is not a construction contract. It is not a land play. It is a claim on the net cash flow the asset produces after it pays its operating costs and its lenders.

In emerging markets the investable universe is wider than toll roads and power plants. The asset families we look at most often:

Transport and logistics: dry ports, bonded warehouses, truck terminals and hubs along rail and road corridors
Agro infrastructure: irrigation, greenhouses, cold chain, storage and processing plants that serve many farmers
Tourism infrastructure: access roads, ski lifts, resort utilities and water treatment for destination areas
Energy: small hydro, solar with a contracted buyer, captive power for industrial parks
Utilities-adjacent platforms: water services, waste handling, heating upgrades
Social infrastructure: health and education facilities delivered with a public partner

The common thread is a service with steady demand and a pricing mechanism someone is accountable for: a tariff, a long-term offtake contract, an availability payment, or a fee charged to a captive user base.

Brownfield, greenfield and the space between

The textbook split is simple. Greenfield means building something new, with construction and ramp-up risk and a higher target return. Brownfield means buying or improving an operating asset, with operating risk and a steadier yield.

Practice is less tidy. Investors quoted in industry press such as Infrastructure Investor have argued that the label can mislead. In emerging markets, an operating toll road on a route with falling traffic is riskier than a new warehouse pre-leased to an anchor tenant.

Stage	Main risk	Where the return comes from	Typical holders
Greenfield	Permits, construction, ramp-up	Value created at completion	Sponsors, developers, DFIs
Contracted greenfield	Construction, counterparty	Contracted cash flows once built	DFIs, project lenders, co-investors
Brownfield expansion	Capex execution	Growth on an existing cash base	Private equity, strategic partners
Operating brownfield	Operations, tariff resets	Cash yield plus efficiency gains	Infrastructure funds, pensions, insurers

Brownfield expansion is where we see the best risk and reward for private equity in frontier markets. The asset already earns, the team knows the permits and customers, and the value created by new capacity goes to the equity.

How the capital stack is built: PPPs and DFI co-financing

Large infrastructure in emerging markets is rarely financed by one investor. It is a stack: sponsor equity at the bottom, co-investor equity next to it, then senior debt from development finance institutions and commercial banks, sometimes with grants or concessional loans that make the first years bankable.

Private capital is growing in this market. According to the World Bank's Private Participation in Infrastructure database, private investment in infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries reached $100.7 billion in 2024, up 16% from $87.1 billion in 2023.

Public-private partnerships

A public-private partnership gives a private company the right to build, finance or operate an asset for a fixed period. It is paid through user tariffs, through availability payments from the state, or a mix. For equity, the questions are who pays, in which currency, and what happens if the government changes the tariff.

Uzbekistan shows both the scale and the discipline required. Officials of the Ministry of Economy and Finance said in 2025 that the country had signed PPP projects worth about $28 billion as of January 1, 2025, roughly 90% of them in energy. The IMF in 2025 welcomed a $6.5 billion ceiling on new PPP projects in Uzbekistan's 2025 budget and urged stricter project selection. For an equity investor that is good news: a state that caps its PPP liabilities is more likely to honor the ones it signs.

What DFIs bring to the stack

DFIs bring capital local markets cannot yet provide, plus standards that slow the first deal and speed up every deal after it. We cover how to work with them in Development Finance Institutions as Co-Investors.

Senior loans with tenors local banks cannot offer
Minority equity that signals credibility to other investors
Guarantees and political risk cover
Blended or concessional tranches that absorb first-loss risk

Return drivers and the risks that eat them

Infrastructure equity returns come from four places: cash yield, growth in volume or tariff, the value created when a project moves from construction to stable operation, and a sale or refinancing once the asset is de-risked. That last step matters most in emerging markets, because a stable asset can be sold to a buyer who accepts a lower return for a lower risk.

The risks are just as specific.

Risk	What it looks like	Structural answer
Currency	Local-currency revenue, dollar debt	Dollar-linked tariffs, export revenue, local-currency debt
Tariff and policy	Prices frozen after an election	Tariff formula in the concession, DFI participation
Counterparty	State utility pays late	Payment guarantees, escrow, diversified customers
Construction	Overruns in mountain terrain	Fixed-price contracts, contingency, proven contractor
Demand	Traffic or visitors below forecast	Anchor contracts, conservative base case, phased build
Exit	Few buyers for a stable asset	Refinancing path, DFI exit rights, planned hold period

None of these risks can be hedged away after the investment. They have to be answered in the deal structure before signing.

Why long-cycle compounding fits Central Asia

Central Asia is in a build-out decade of rail, power and water, financed mostly by states and DFIs. The projects are large and long.

Rail: Construction of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway was launched in December 2024, and Kun.uz reported in December 2025 a cost estimate of $4.7 billion, with a 304-kilometer Kyrgyz section.
Power: Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are preparing the 1,860 MW Kambarata-1 hydropower plant on the Naryn River, with World Bank financing for preparation work.
Water: A 2025 Eurasian Development Bank study estimated that Central Asia needs $29.2 billion for water and climate infrastructure in 2025-2030 and faces a financing deficit of more than $12 billion.

These are not private equity deals. They are the spine. The private opportunity sits in what connects to it: the logistics park at a new rail junction, the cold-storage cluster that lets farmers sell along new export routes, the resort utilities that let a mountain destination open year-round. We look at the corridor in The Middle Corridor and the tourism case in Mountain and Eco-Tourism in Kyrgyzstan.

The growth backdrop supports long holds. GETVISION ASIA's market data puts 2026 real GDP growth at 6.4-6.8% for Uzbekistan and 6.1-8.9% for Kyrgyzstan. The development banks are clear that the next phase needs private operators. As Zheng Wu, ADB Country Director for the Kyrgyz Republic, put it: "Growth will increasingly depend on a dynamic and competitive private sector."

In a build-out decade, the patient owner of a well-contracted asset is paid twice: once in cash yield and once when the risk is gone.

How we underwrite a long-cycle asset

We use a staged process. Each stage has to pass before the next one costs money.

Service need: Who uses this asset, how many of them, and what do they do today without it?
Revenue contract: Who pays, in which currency, under what formula, and who enforces it?
Partners: Is there an operator with a track record, a local partner with land and permits, and a lender willing to commit?
Structure: Holding company, shareholder agreement, governing law and arbitration, confirmed with counsel in each jurisdiction.
Downside case: Can the asset service its debt if volumes stay well below plan for several years?
Exit or hold: Who buys the asset once it is stable, or what refinancing returns the equity's capital?

We co-invest; we do not speculate. We prefer a smaller stake in a well-contracted asset with a strong operator over control of a project whose revenue depends on hope. The same partnership logic runs through our approach to property, described in Partnership-Driven Real Estate.

Frequently Asked Questions

It is buying a stake in a company that holds an infrastructure asset, such as a logistics hub, power plant or water system, and earning returns from its operating cash flows. Unlike a lender, the equity holder takes the residual risk and keeps the upside.

Greenfield projects are built from scratch and carry permitting, construction and ramp-up risk. Brownfield assets already operate and carry operating and tariff risk. In practice, the revenue contract often matters more than the label.

The state grants a private company the right to build, finance or operate an asset for a fixed term, paid through user tariffs, availability payments from the state, or both. Investors should check who pays, in which currency, and how the tariff can change.

They provide long-tenor debt, equity, guarantees and technical assistance that local markets often cannot. Their standards also make later deals easier to finance.

The region is building rail, power and water capacity at scale, largely with state and DFI funding, which creates demand for private assets that connect to it. Currency, tariff and counterparty risks are real and must be answered in each deal's structure.