Infrastructure Investment Demands in Emerging Markets and Developing Economies

The authors have assembled 1960–2012
infrastructure stock data from 145 countries to estimate the
demand for infrastructure services in emerging markets and
developing economies. This paper identifies that the
required resource flows to satisfy new demand while
maintaining service for existing infrastructure amounts to
$836 billion or 6.1 percent of current gross domestic
product per year over the period 2014–20. The annual
infrastructure investment gap for emerging markets and
developing economies is $452 billion per year, which implies
that emerging markets and developing economies should almost
double their current spending. The paper also estimates that
half of the spending should be allocated to maintenance of
existing assets. Acknowledging the challenges to compare
infrastructure investment estimates across different
methodologies, the authors recognize this result as a lower
bound estimate and compare the results with others available
in the literature.