Infrastructure Investment Needs

The World Bank aims to develop a set of estimates for infrastructure needs – in terms of both investment, and operation and maintenance – based on expected growth targets, Millennium Development Goals, and other relevant policy objectives. One of the main contributions of this type of estimations is to provide a reality check of the constraints imposed by the availability of funds in front of such a gigantic development challenge.

Public sector has had – and it is expected to continue having – a key role not only in policy making but also in financing infrastructure service provision. However, public funds are proven to be insufficient to cover increasing infrastructure needs.  In addition, there is a limit of what can be gained via increased efficiency and improved management, and there is a clear and legitimate competition for public funds between various sectors.

Having a good sense of the financing gap relative to the upper bound established by infrastructure needs estimations would guide creative schemes for sub-national financing and public-private partnerships among others. Therefore, in parallel, the infrastructure financing capacity of each country will be assessed based on indicators of external debt, depth of domestic capital markets, and fiscal constraints. These assessments will support the development of regional/country infrastructure strategies and associated economic and sector work and projects.