Infrastructure connects people to opportunities, promotes economic growth, and improves livelihoods. When infrastructure is sustainable, it also lays the path for a more livable planet.
However, shifting toward greener infrastructure requires multiple trillions of dollars. With the reality of cash-strapped government budgets, private sector participation is an important solution to filling the financing gap.
At the World Bank, we’re pulling out all the stops to enable this transition and make it easier for the private sector to participate in development projects through our work on public-private partnerships, our overhauled guarantees program, and our grants to the world’s poorest countries. A key tool in these efforts is our Private Participation in Infrastructure (PPI) report, the latest of which was released this week.
First published in 1984, the PPI report now tracks investments in 10,000 infrastructure projects in low- and middle-income countries. Pulling from the only database of its kind, the report is a vital resource for tracking progress and identifying trends, especially as infrastructure financing becomes a bigger priority for countries around the globe. It also offers a direct view into the regions and countries, as well as the sectors, receiving infrastructure investments, how these projects are structured, and what role multilateral development banks can best play in these contexts.
Our 2023 Private Participation in Infrastructure report finds that private infrastructure investment in low- and middle-income countries totaled $86 billion last year. While this is a 5 percent decline in total investments compared with 2022, when trends were looking more hopeful as we emerged from the pandemic, the numbers are on par with the previous five-year average.