Key to Improving Infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean, Spending Better

Rather than focusing on often poorly defined financing gaps, the report advocates for addressing service gaps, according to countries development priorities. This means putting in place efficient ways of addressing these needs, and developing clear rules for deciding when taxpayers should finance services, instead of users.

Spending more efficiently could have enormous benefits. In the case of the energy sector, where transmission and distribution losses are high, LAC would need $23 billion per year if it were to follow the same investment path of the past. Costs would at least halve under an approach that favors efficiency, climate resiliency and renewable energy solutions.

According to the report, many of the causes for inefficient infrastructure investment have roots beyond the sector, including lack of institutional capacity for planning, regulatory uncertainty, and budgeting and implementation issues in many countries. Inefficient procurement processes, for instance, contribute to excess costs.

Adequate pricing for infrastructure services is another important potential area for increased efficiency. The report argues that pricing should go beyond simple cost recovery and take into account issues like social acceptability, quality, equity and attraction of commercial financing. In order to preserve tax-payers money, the report says that public and concessional resources should only be deployed where commercial financing is not viable or cost-effective.

Finally, the report concludes that allowing infrastructure operators to diversify their revenue can contribute to easing the fiscal cost. Water treatment plants, for instance, can generate electricity for self-consumption and even sale, and sanitized sludge can be sold as fertilizer, instead of having to be disposed at high cost in sanitary landfills, options not currently available.

Related World Bank Links Rethinking Infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean Spending Better to Achieve More World Bank in Latin America and the Caribbean

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