Policy Lessons Learned in Finance and Private Sector Participation by

In the effort to develop dynamic national family planning service systems, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has supported a sustained set of initiatives to strengthen private sector service delivery. Many of these, like the SOMARC, Enterprise, PROFIT, and Initiatives projects, have focused primarily on the operational side of program expansion (e.g., training private providers, helping clinic managers develop business and financial plans, improving management efficiency, and marketing products and services). This paper looks at how activities in the policy domain often determine the success or failure of efforts to develop private sector services. Ironically, one of the lessons learned in this paper is that private sector expansion often begins with public sector initiatives, a principle that is clearly reflected in recent policy-related technical assistance activities. This paper presents lessons learned during implementation of these activities and emphasizes ways to strengthen the policy climate and to plan for service expansion. The activities described in this paper were primarily conducted under the USAID-funded OPTIONS II Project, implemented between 1990 and 1995. Many of these activities have been sustained and are being expanded under the POLICY Project over the period 1995 to 2000