2023-07-19 01:07:59
Latin America and the Caribbean need an additional investment of more than 200,000 million dollars a year in infrastructure to meet the sustainable development goals in 2030, warned Tuesday an official of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
“There is a huge infrastructure and quality deficit; only a third of the roads are paved and one in four people does not have access to drinking water” in the region, said the executive vice president of the IDB, Jordan Schwartz, at the opening of a meeting on “Public-Private Partnership” in the Panamanian capital.
“To close the infrastructure deficit and meet the sustainable development goals by 2030, the region needs an additional investment of more than 200 billion dollars a year,” he added.
Schwartz admitted that the necessary amount “is enormous”, since “it is equivalent to all the foreign direct investment that the region received in 2022”, and explained that one difficulty in obtaining the resources “is the complex macroeconomic situation that the countries of the region”.
“Sovereign debt exceeded (equivalent to) 70% of regional GDP (gross domestic product) and has almost doubled in the last 15 years,” he said.
The 2030 development goals constitute an action plan approved by the UN in 2015 to eradicate poverty and protect the planet, among other goals.
If these investments are not made, Schwartz warned, economic development will slow down and “the most worrying thing” is that thousands of poor people will continue without access to public services.
However, the official suggested that these challenges might be met, because “the region is a leader in attracting private investment in infrastructure.”
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