Introduction

Access to basic infrastructure services – roads, electricity, water, sanitation – and the efficient provision of the service, still remains as a key challenge in the fight against poverty in the LAC region and in the elusive search for sustainable growth. These services provide not only direct and fundamental benefits but also have important indirect effects on the living conditions of the population and are key ingredients for productive development and the enhancement of competitiveness.

Infrastructure services are central to individual and firm productivity and the opportunity for advancement. While this is intuitive for water, electricity, and telecommunication services, which bring with them the promise of connectivity and higher productivity, it is also true for roads and transport services. Access to markets, jobs, healthcare, and education is still an issue for the poor. Many of the poor (and particularly the extreme poor) in rural communities in the LAC region live on average 5 km or more from the nearest paved road, which is almost twice as far as non-poor rural households, limiting their access to all those services and opportunities.

Since 1990, infrastructure coverage and quality have increased in most LAC sectors and countries. There have been major improvements in access to water, sanitation, electricity, telecommunications, ports, and airports. Only in roads has coverage not changed much, but efforts and resources have still been invested to improve the quality of road networks.