Publication: Infrastructure in Latin America : Recent Developments and Key Challenges, Volume 1
Loading...
Published
2005-08
ISSN
Date
2012-06-22
Author(s)
Morrison, Mary
Editor(s)
Abstract
In the last decade, most countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have not spent enough on infrastructure. Total investment has fallen as a percentage of GDP, as public infrastructure expenditure has borne the brunt of fiscal adjustment, and private investment has failed to take up the slack. Most infrastructure services have therefore lagged behind East Asian comparators, middle income countries in general and China, in terms of both coverage and quality, despite the generally positive impacts of private sector involvement. This lackluster performance has slowed the LAC region's economic growth and progress in poverty reduction. Countries of the region therefore need to focus on upgrading their infrastructure, as this can yield great dividends in terms of growth, competitiveness and poverty reduction, as well as improving the quality of life of their citizens. Catching up requires significant new investment. But first, measures need to be taken to ensure that infrastructure spending produces higher returns, both economic and social. Both these tasks involve multiple challenges. The first section of the main report reviews progress made in infrastructure coverage and quality and discusses the impacts this has had on growth, competitiveness and the fight against poverty. The second section argues that the main issue has been that there has not been enough improvement in the management of resources, which have been insufficient anyway, and also reviews the region's experiences with private participation in infrastructure. The third section builds on the lessons of the last decade to tackle the key challenges: improving social and economic returns from infrastructure, managing private participation in infrastructure better and raising new finance for infrastructure.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Morrison, Mary; Fay, Marianne. 2005. Infrastructure in Latin America : Recent Developments and Key Challenges, Volume 1. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/8801 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean : Recent Developments and Key Challenges(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007)This book reviews Latin America's experience with infrastructure reform over the last fifteen years. It argues that the region's infrastructure has suffered from public retrenchment and unrealistic expectations about private involvement. Poor infrastructure now hampers productivity, growth, and poverty reduction. Addressing this requires more and better spending, and acceptance that governments remain central to infrastructure provision and supervision, although the private sector still has an important role to play.Publication The Impact of Private Sector Participation in Infrastructure : Lights, Shadows, and the Road Ahead(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2008)As numerous countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and elsewhere are moving toward a second phase of private participation in infrastructure programs mostly through public-private partnership schemes and other countries are just beginning the process, several concerns remain from the outcomes of the first phase. These concerns are making governments cautious in moving forward. The Impact of private sector participation in infrastructure addresses these concerns and brings clarity to the debate on the impact of private participation in infrastructure. The assessment of this impact may be one of the most emotional policy issues in economics, as it is clouded in a mist of myths, perceptions, and reality. This book analyzes the impact and sorts out the truth from the myths. The authors take a systematic and hard look at the facts (i.e., data) in Latin America, where starting in the late 1980s, many governments brought private sector participation into the delivery of essential utilities services. Although there are many assessments of this experience, none was able to rely on systemic, cross-country, and time-series data, and practically all of them did not save rare exceptions account for what would have happened in the absence of interventions (the counterfactual). This book does just that. It brings together an all encompassing database from the 1980s to the first decade of this century and develops an effective and robust methodology, accounting for the counterfactual, which tests and estimates the impact of reform on an exceptionally wide set of outcome indicators. As a result, this book presents the most in-depth study to date of the private sector participation experience in Latin America, and it substantially advances the existing literature by offering robust econometric analysis.Publication Remittances and Development : Lessons from Latin America(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2008)There are four main messages that emerge from this book. First, no matter how authors look at the issue, remittances are extremely important in the Latin American context. With remittances estimated to have topped more than US$50 billion in 2006, Latin America is now the main destination of these flows. Second, remittances generate a number of important positive contributions to economic development. In particular, they tend to reduce poverty and inequality in recipient countries, as well as increase aggregate investment and growth. Third, even though remittances have a positive impact on the development indicators of the recipient economies, the magnitude of the estimated changes tends to be modest. Fourth, policy makers may take actions to enhance the development impact of remittances. One important message of this book is that the way countries benefit from remittances appears to be positively related to the countries' own institutional and macroeconomic environments.Publication Public-Private Partnerships : Reference Guide, Version 2.0(World Bank, Washington, DC; Asian Development Bank, Mandaluyong City, Philippines; Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC, 2014)A growing number of developing country governments are interested in using public-private partnerships (PPPs) to provide public infrastructure assets and services. The PPP reference guide seeks to provide advice on what PPP practitioners should know, rather than provide advice on what to do. The guide sets out the main topics, looks at the key issues that must be addressed, and provides what one consider the most important references that PPP practitioners can turn to for answers and to enhance one knowledge and understanding. It is structured into separate sections that focus on three main areas, firstly what are PPPs, when may they be used and the advantages and disadvantages relative to public provision; secondly the policy, legal, and institutional frameworks that should be put into place to help improve effectiveness; and finally the ways in which PPP projects can be developed and implemented. It introduces key topics on PPP, sets out options, and directs readers to examples, and key references where one can find out more. This guide provides new resources and updated examples.Publication Philippines : Meeting the Infrastructure Challenges(Washington, DC, 2005-12)The Philippines enjoys tremendous endowments of natural, and human resources that provide great potential for economic development and poverty reduction. However, overall development outcomes over the last decades have fallen short of potential. The gap can be largely attributed to weak performance of public institutions in providing services to citizens, which leads to a vicious cycle of weak public services, lack of trust in the government, and unwillingness on the part of citizens to provide adequate resources to the government. The key development challenge, therefore, is to reverse the cycle to one of virtuous development where increased government revenue translates into improved service delivery and greater public trust in the government. Infrastructure plays an important role in this development process. Insufficient infrastructure has been a major constraint to economic growth and poverty reduction in the Philippines. Though the country has relatively high access levels to water, sanitation, and electricity, service levels have failed to keep up with rapid population growth and urbanization. Infrastructure development in the country is hampered by a poor business environment; weaknesses in planning, coordination, and financing; and a decrease in private sector involvement in infrastructure provision. The report presents a road map which will help spur the expansion, and improvement of infrastructure services, and move the country into a virtuous circle of growth and development. It suggests that, in order to ease infrastructure constraints, the Philippines need to achieve a gradual increase in infrastructure investments to at least 5 percent of GDP, and an increase in the efficiency of spending. Furthermore, it is strongly suggested that the way forward for sustained development in infrastructure requires instigating a rigorous fiscal reform program; pursuing continued reforms in key sectors-particularly power, roads, and water-to improve cost recovery, competition, and institutional credibility, and to sharply reduce corruption; improving central oversight of the planning and coordination of investments; and, making a few focused investments through public-private partnerships to address key bottlenecks, and achieve quick gains in service delivery.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Remarks at the World Health Organization Media Briefing on COVID-19 and Vaccine Equity(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06-01)World Bank Group President David Malpass stated that the immediate priority is for countries that have sufficient supply to quickly release doses to countries that have vaccination deployment programs. He said that by the end of June, the World Bank will have approved vaccination operations in over 50 countries. It is vital to speed up the supply chain. The World Bank is providing transparent access to very detailed information about projects through an online portal available at https://www.worldbank.org/vaccines. He urged other development partners to publish detailed information about their vaccine financing and deployment programs and their delivery schedules. The World Bank is also working to expand supply and will be making announcements of investments by IFC, the World Bank Group’s private sector development arm.Publication Infrastructure and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-09)An adequate supply of infrastructure services has long been viewed by both academics and policy makers as a key ingredient for economic development. Sub-Saharan Africa ranks consistently at the bottom of all developing regions in terms of infrastructure performance, and an increasing number of observers point to deficient infrastructure as a major obstacle for growth and poverty reduction across the region. This paper offers an empirical assessment of the impact of infrastructure development on growth and inequality, with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper uses a comparative cross-regional perspective to place Africa's experience in the international context. Drawing from an updated data set of infrastructure quantity and quality indicators covering more than 100 countries and spanning the years 1960-2005, the paper estimates empirical growth and inequality equations including a standard set of control variables augmented by infrastructure quantity and quality measures, and controlling for the potential endogeneity of the latter. The estimates illustrate the potential contribution of infrastructure development to growth and equity across Africa.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Hospitals in Health Systems(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-05-29)Improving global health outcomes amidst fiscal constraints, climate crises, and pandemics is a formidable challenge for governments worldwide. The recently published WHO/World Bank 2023 UHC Global Monitoring Report underscores a concerning reality: despite the goal of universal health coverage (UHC), over half of the global population, over 4.5 billion people, lacks full access to quality health care. This pervasive lack of access is coupled with significant financial hardship, with over 1 billion people facing catastrophic out-of-pocket health spending, and nearly 17 percent of the global population pushed into poverty due to health care costs (WHO andThe World Bank 2023).Publication Development Economics and the International Development Association(2011-01-01)Prevailing economic ideas -- and fashions -- about development have influenced the International Development Association (IDA) since its creation in 1960. The creation of the organization itself is the result of two contemporaneous facts: an urgent need to channel development finance to least-developed countries and an increasing pressure on World Bank management to directly address the issue of poverty in developing countries. Changing views, over time, have been a rationale -- and, at times, a justification -- for emphasizing poverty and social sectors; for providing grants to particular groups of countries; and for strategic choices and sectoral priorities. IDA has been influential in development debates and been an advocate for specific views about development policy. This paper gives an overview of these views and documents how they have shaped the activities of the organization since its creation. After a brief review of development thinking and of the organization of research at the World Bank, the paper documents the shifts that have taken place in country allocations and in sector emphasis in IDA over the past 50 years and highlights the strategic themes that have guided its development agenda: toward increasing country selectivity; from projects to programs; from conditionality to country ownership of reforms; and from input-based to results-based performance.