Financing Mechanisms for Cookstove Dissemination

Introduction

In the world of business, ‘financing’ is a necessary link between products and services, as both the supply side and demand side need to the required capital to either invest in business infrastructure or buy goods. Financing is needed for monetary cash flows, support activities that enhance the quality and reduce the cost of products and services, increasing customer awareness, and building market share.
For the product supply, availability and the cost of financing determines whether it is feasible to start up a business, and the price demanded for the offered products and services. Strategies to address supply side financing include direct subsidies as start up grants, soft loans, and measures to reduce production costs. Production costs include material costs, and the design and efficient production process and technology.

On the demand side, the willingness and capacity to pay will strongly influence the effective demand for the product. Strategies to address demand side financing include direct subsidies as buy down grants, awareness-raising and product promotion campaigns, and micro-credits schemes.

 

‘I like your stove – but I cannot afford to buy it. It is too expensive for me!’

 

Access to financing is a key factor in enabling target groups to purchase modern cooking energy in development countries.
Many have come across this statement in the process of developing a programme for the promotion of improved cookstoves. Often there is a perfect stove that fits the needs of the target group perfectly, and yet they say they cannot afford it.

If you meet this statement, you have several options:

• a) Analyse the statement: Perhaps ‘I cannot afford to buy your stove’ is just the socially accepted way of saying ‘I do not like your stove’ (maybe because it is not perceived as a good stove or maybe the access to firewood is not a ‘burning issue’ to the person in the household who is controlling the cash).
• b) If the statement is really true, you might consider simplifying your stove design to compromise between performance and cost. Even the best stove – if used by only a few households – will not contribute to development as much as a stove with medium efficiency used by many thousands of households.
• c) Often this is the point at which the issue of financing comes on the agenda. Providing financial assistance to the producers or the users of the stoves may assist in removing barriers for access of the target groups to improved cook stoves.

There is a comprehensive debate on subsidies for stove producers, as well as stove users, usually focussing on aspects such as their impact on sustainability, or the feasibility of direct targeting.

Any development programme is designed to spend money for the promotion of a change process. By definition, this money is a subsidy to the development initiative, as the beneficiaries do not pay for the services rendered to them by the programme. The subject of lively debate is therefore not the subsidy of development processes as such, but the ‘IF’ and the ‘HOW’ of direct or indirect subsidies to the producers or users of Improved Cook Stoves.

In Section 4.4.1, the topic of subsidies is outlined in a systematic manner, with a listing of commonly perceived opportunities and challenges in the use of direct subsidies for consumer goods and other end products.

If , as outlined above, a development programme is a sort of indirect subsidy to a specific change process, it is following not following the same rationale as a commercial banking decision. A loan from a development agency is commonly perceived as a grant rather than something to be repaid. The financing of a cookstove programme will benefit from collaboration with a micro-finance institution, because this will visibly and organisationally distinguish between aid and business.

Financial assistance for stove producers and commercial stove users (such as restaurants) adopts a similar manner to that used by micro-finance institutions. The beneficiary of the loan is earning money with stoves (production or use) and can use the profits to repay the loan.

Much more controversial is the use of loans for households, so that they can buy improved cookstoves. It is only in a fully commercialised fuel market that the fuel savings can be used to repay the loan. It is difficult to prove that ‘time saved’ through reduced wood collection, less washing and cleaning, and faster cooking, translates directly into more cash income. This makes it more difficult to prove the case with micro-finance institutions for supplying finance for improved cookstoves for household use.

In Section 4.4.2, many aspects of using micro- finance especially micro-credit for improved cookstove promotion (in collaboration with micro-finance institutions) are discussed in more detail.