ABSTRACT
The factor which has possibly had the greatest impact on competition within the international construction industry in the 1980s is the increased need for finance in developing countries to carry out construction projects. In the past, major sources of these funds have been direct loans by the commercial banks and international development agencies to these regions, but the reluctance of commercial banks to lend to the highly indebted and often politically unstable developing areas and the limited capacity of the development agencies to provide development finance has placed the burden of provision of project finance on international construction firms. The clear implication of this, in what is a buyer's market for construction services, is that international contractors are increasingly having to compete upon the attractiveness of the financial package they offer rather than the technical services they provide. This form of competition has become the standard competitive practice in the highly indebted LDCs.
