Publication: Rethinking Infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean: Spending Better to Achieve More
Loading...
Files in English
12,178 downloads
245 downloads
311 downloads
Other Files
485 downloads
Date
2017-04-06
ISSN
Published
2017-04-06
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Latin America and the Caribbean does not have the infrastructure it needs, or deserves, given its income. Many argue that the solution is to spend more; by contrast, this report has one main message: Latin America can dramatically narrow its infrastructure service gap by spending efficiently on the right things.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Fox, Charles; Fay, Marianne; Andres, Luis Alberto; Staub, Stephane; Slawson, Michael; Narloch, Ulf. 2017. Rethinking Infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean: Spending Better to Achieve More. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26390 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Rethinking Infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-07-18)Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) does not have the infrastructure it needs, or deserves, given its income. Many argue that the solution is to spend more; by contrast, this report has one main message: Latin America can dramatically narrow its infrastructure service gap by spending efficiently on the right things. This report asks three questions: what should LAC countries’ goals be? How can these goals be achieved as cost-effectively as possible? And who should pay to reach these goals? In doing so, we drop the ‘infrastructure gap’ notion, favoring an approach built on identifying the ‘service gap’. Benchmarking Latin America in this way reveals clear strengths and weaknesses. Access to water and electricity is good, with the potential for the region’s electricity sector to drive competitive advantage; by contrast, transport and sanitation should be key focus areas for further development. The report also identifies and analyses some of the emerging challenges for the region—climate change, increased demand and urbanization—that will put increasing pressure on infrastructure and policy makers alike. Improving the region’s infrastructure performance in the context of tight fiscal space will require spending better on well identified priorities. Unlike most infrastructure diagnostics, this report argues that much of what is needed lies outside the infrastructure sector – in the form of broader government issues—from competition policy, to budgeting rules that no longer solely focus on controlling cash expenditures. We also find that traditional recommendations continue to apply regarding independent, well-performing regulators and better corporate governance, and highlight the critical importance of cost recovery where feasible and desirable, as the basis for future commercial finance of infrastructure services. Latin America has the means and potential to do better; and it can do so by spending more efficiently on the right things.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 Infrastructure in Latin America : Recent Developments and Key Challenges, Volume 1(Washington, DC, 2005-08)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.Publication Inclusive Green Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean(Washington, DC, 2013-01)Argentina has expanded the use of its portion of the Parana-Paraguay waterways system for the transportation of soy and other bulk commodities through an innovative tolling system that self-finances the dredging and maintenance of the rivers. Brazil, in turn, is pursuing a 'green trucking' strategy to improve efficiency of its cargo haulage industry, reduce petroleum usage, and curb pollution from trucking. For the entire hemisphere, the expansion of the Panama Canal will bring post-Panama vessels and introduce greater scale economies in shipping. The following sections of this paper provide a more detailed review of the sectoral objectives, challenges, and way forward in making Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) growth greener and more inclusive. It looks back over the achievements of the demand sectors of urban development and infrastructure services, energy, urban transport, and water and sanitation, as well as natural resources and rural development since Rio 1992. It highlights the achievements in those areas, and the ability of those accomplishments to establish a robust path for the region to inclusive green growth.Publication Climate Change and Poverty : An Analytical Framework(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-11)Climate change and climate policies will affect poverty reduction efforts through direct and immediate impacts on the poor and by affecting factors that condition poverty reduction, such as economic growth. This paper explores this relation between climate change and policies and poverty outcomes by examining three questions: the (static) impact on poor people's livelihood and well-being; the impact on the risk for non-poor individuals to fall into poverty; and the impact on the ability of poor people to escape poverty. The paper proposes four channels that determine household consumption and through which households may escape or fall into poverty (prices, assets, productivity, and opportunities). It then discusses whether and how these channels are affected by climate change and climate policies, focusing on the exposure, vulnerability, and ability to adapt of the poor (and those vulnerable to poverty). It reviews the existing literature and offers three major conclusions. First, climate change is likely to represent a major obstacle to a sustained eradication of poverty. Second, climate policies are compatible with poverty reduction provided that (i) poverty concerns are carefully taken into account in their design and (ii) they are accompanied by the appropriate set of social policies. Third, climate change does not modify how poverty policies should be designed, but it creates greater needs and more urgency. The scale issue is explained by the fact that climate will cause more frequent and more severe shocks; the urgency, by the need to exploit the window of opportunity given to us before climate impacts are likely to substantially increase.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022)Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022: Correcting Course provides the first comprehensive analysis of the pandemic’s toll on poverty in developing countries. It identifies how governments can optimize fiscal policy to help correct course. Fiscal policies offset the impact of COVID-19 on poverty in many high-income countries, but those policies offset barely one quarter of the pandemic’s impact in low-income countries and lower-middle-income countries. Improving support to households as crises continue will require reorienting protective spending away from generally regressive and inefficient subsidies and toward a direct transfer support system—a first key priority. Reorienting fiscal spending toward supporting growth is a second key priority identified by the report. Some of the highest-value public spending often pays out decades later. Amid crises, it is difficult to protect such investments, but it is essential to do so. Finally, it is not enough just to spend wisely - when additional revenue does need to be mobilized, it must be done in a way that minimizes reductions in poor people’s incomes. The report highlights how exploring underused forms of progressive taxation and increasing the efficiency of tax collection can help in this regard. Poverty and Shared Prosperity is a biennial series that reports on global trends in poverty and shared prosperity. Each report also explores a central challenge to poverty reduction and boosting shared prosperity, assessing what works well and what does not in different settings. By bringing together the latest evidence, this corporate flagship report provides a foundation for informed advocacy around ending extreme poverty and improving the lives of the poorest in every country in the world. For more information, please visit worldbank.org/poverty-and-shared-prosperity.Publication Reference Guide to Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism : Second Edition and Supplement on Special Recommendation IX(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006)Efforts to launder money and finance terrorism have been evolving rapidly in recent years in response to heightened countermeasures. The international community has witnessed the use of increasingly sophisticated methods to move illicit funds through financial systems across the globe and has acknowledged the need for improved multilateral cooperation to fight these criminal activities. This second edition is to serve as a single, comprehensive source of practical information for countries to fight money laundering and terrorist financing. It discusses the problems caused by these crimes, the specific actions countries need to take to address them and the role international organizations play in the process. The report is organized as follows: Part A of this Reference Guide describes the problem of money laundering and terrorist financing, their adverse consequences, and the benefits of an effective regime. It also identifies the relevant international standard-setting organizations and discusses their specific efforts and instruments that fight these activities. Part B describes the various elements that are part of a comprehensive legal and institutional framework for anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism for any country. This part of the Reference Guide is a step-by-step approach to achieve compliance with international standards, although it does not dictate the specific methods or actions to be adopted. Rather, it raises the issues that must be addressed and discusses the options that a country has in order to resolve these issues. Part C describes the role of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the global effort and the coordination of technical assistance available to countries in order to help them achieve compliance with international standards. Each chapter is a self-contained discussion of the topics covered in that chapter with detailed references to background and original source materials. Annexes I, II and III provide complete citations to reference materials.Publication Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2016(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016-10-02)Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2016 is the first of an annual flagship report that will inform a global audience comprising development practitioners, policy makers, researchers, advocates, and citizens in general with the latest and most accurate estimates on trends in global poverty and shared prosperity. This edition will also document trends in inequality and identify recent country experiences that have been successful in reducing inequalities, provide key lessons from those experiences, and synthesize the rigorous evidence on public policies that can shift inequality in a way that bolsters poverty reduction and shared prosperity in a sustainable manner. Specifically, the report will address the following questions: • What is the latest evidence on the levels and evolution of extreme poverty and shared prosperity? • Which countries and regions have been more successful in terms of progress toward the twin goals and which are lagging behind? • What does the global context of lower economic growth mean for achieving the twin goals? • How can inequality reduction contribute to achieving the twin goals? • What does the evidence show concerning global and between- and within-country inequality trends? • Which interventions and countries have used the most innovative approaches to achieving the twin goals through reductions in inequality? The report will make four main contributions. First, it will present the most recent numbers on poverty, shared prosperity, and inequality. Second, it will stress the importance of inequality reduction in ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity by 2030 in a context of weaker growth. Third, it will highlight the diversity of within-country inequality reduction experiences and will synthesize experiences of successful countries and policies, addressing the roots of inequality without compromising economic growth. In doing so, the report will shatter some myths and sharpen our knowledge of what works in reducing inequalities. Finally, it will also advocate for the need to expand and improve data collection—for example, data availability, comparability, and quality—and rigorous evidence on inequality impacts in order to deliver high-quality poverty and shared prosperity monitoring.Publication Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2018(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018-10-17)The World Bank Group has two overarching goals: End extreme poverty by 2030 and promote shared prosperity by boosting the incomes of the bottom 40 percent of the population in each economy. As this year’s Poverty and Shared Prosperity report documents, the world continues to make progress toward these goals. In 2015, approximately one-tenth of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty, and the incomes of the bottom 40 percent rose in 77 percent of economies studied. But success cannot be taken for granted. Poverty remains high in Sub- Saharan Africa, as well as in fragile and conflict-affected states. At the same time, most of the world’s poor now live in middle-income countries, which tend to have higher national poverty lines. This year’s report tracks poverty comparisons at two higher poverty thresholds—$3.20 and $5.50 per day—which are typical of standards in lower- and upper-middle-income countries. In addition, the report introduces a societal poverty line based on each economy’s median income or consumption. Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2018: Piecing Together the Poverty Puzzle also recognizes that poverty is not only about income and consumption—and it introduces a multidimensional poverty measure that adds other factors, such as access to education, electricity, drinking water, and sanitation. It also explores how inequality within households could affect the global profile of the poor. All these additional pieces enrich our understanding of the poverty puzzle, bringing us closer to solving it. For more information, please visit worldbank.org/PSPPublication Falling Long-Term Growth Prospects(World Bank : Washington, DC, 2024-02-01)A structural growth slowdown is underway across the world: at current trends, the global potential growth rate is expected to fall to a three-decade low over the remainder of the 2020s. Nearly all the forces that have powered growth and prosperity since the early 1990s have weakened, not only because of a series of shocks to the global economy over the past three years. A persistent and broad-based decline in long-term growth prospects imperils the ability of emerging market and developing economies to combat poverty, tackle climate change, and meet other key development objectives. These challenges call for an ambitious policy response at the national and global levels. This book presents the first detailed analysis of the growth slowdown and a rich menu of policy options to deliver better growth outcomes.