In this blog, Svetlana and Roberto discuss the major cross-border projects currently being planned and delivered with Russia’s involvement, and the importance of comprehensive quality assessment in delivering these projects. Their discussion practically illustrates several elements of successful cross-border project delivery that are detailed in the GI Hub’s cross-border reference guide, Connectivity Across Border.

Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) countries have a large, and increasing, infrastructure quantitative, qualitative and efficiency gap. The lack of sufficient physical assets, inadequate maintenance and poor service provision negatively impacts the quality of life of its population and the competitiveness of its economies.   Over the last three decades public investment remains low at less than 2% of GDP, half of what East Asia invests in infrastructure per year. During the COVID-19 economic crisis, although the need for increasing public investment has grown this hasn’t translated into reality. Historically public investment will not increase because the region is characterized by a bias against infrastructure assets in favor of current expenditures during economic crises. Additionally, investment in infrastructure in LAC is perceived as a risky proposition in times of fiscal imbalances and debt growth. The average fiscal package to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 was 8.5% of GDP and deficits increased by an average of 5.3% of GDP in 2020, propelling the public debt from 58% of GDP in 2019 to 72% in 2020 and it could continue to rise to 76% in 2023.  Preliminary estimates confirm that governments in LAC invested less than 1.5% of GDP in infrastructure in 2020, not a promising scenario for a major shift in public investment to close the regional infrastructure gap.

With signs of increasing international cooperation on climate change, including the Biden Administration’s commitment to halve America’s net greenhouse gas pollution by 2030, we may finally see new levels of momentum for transnational or cross-border renewable energy projects, which the United Nations has cited as required for the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy.

InfraChallenge 2021 invited ideas for building and maintaining better, more resilient infrastructure. Discover who made the Top 20.

On average, around 40% of the primary infrastructure transactions that involve private sector participation also involve a public institution. However, this varies by income group.

The volume of global private infrastructure investment conducted in primary markets continued to decline in 2020, falling to a decade-low of USD80 billion.

Since the onset of COVID-19 lockdowns in Q2 2020, global private infrastructure investment has been trending downwards. In Q4 2020, private infrastructure investment was just 60% of the level in Q4 2019.

Public investment in infrastructure is more effective in increasing economic output than other types of public spending