Latin America Infrastructure Woes Add to Inequality
It’s not too late to reboot tapped out pipes, cables and bus queues and turn a rout into a win.
Covid-19 has exposed Latin America’s economic weaknesses.
Photographer: Andre Coelho/Getty Images
Latin America’s baleful infrastructure is only too familiar. So, too, are the opportunity costs of years of underinvestment and neglect in ports, roads, water works and the electricity grid. Just ask the almost two thirds of private companies in Argentina, Venezuela and Ecuador that the World Bank says are trying to do business amid chronic power failures.
If the region fails to put more money into infrastructure, Latin America and the Caribbean could forfeit as much as 15% of potential gross domestic product growth over the next 10 years, Inter-American Bank (IADB) manager for infrastructure and energy Jose Agustin Aguerre told me. With the region already forecast to lag behind the rest of the developing world in GDP growth, the misfortunes will likely increase. That’s just one of the takeaways of “From Structures to Services,” a new IADB study on the region’s infrastructure woes. Another is who suffers the most for the debacle.