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Special Report: The coming transport revolution in Latin America and the Caribbean (ISSN 17414474)

Filling the investment gap

A key problem is that LAC counties have not been investing enough in transport and related infrastructure. The transport revolution is not going to make this problem go away, although it may ease some of the obstacles and be a catalyst for some solutions. The UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), using the INFRALATAM database on existing infrastructure development, calculated in May 2017 that LAC countries should be investing 6.2% of GDP every year (over US$300bn) to meet their infrastructure needs. However, up to 2015 the total amount actually invested had been on average only 2.3%. Of that, 1.5 percentage points represented public sector investment, while private sector infrastructure investment was only 0.8%. The infrastructure investment share of GDP in the region did not increase between 2008 and 2015. According to the database, over half of total infrastructure investment is in the transport sector, followed by the energy sector with around 25% of the total. Other sectors include water and sanitation, flood defences, irrigation, and telecommunications.

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