Countries in the Asia-Pacific region will needs extra investment of about $459bn per year until 2020 to meet their infrastructure needs, according to an Asian Development Bank (ADB) report.
The 25 developing countries surveyed in the report, which comprise 96% of the region’s population, spent $881bn in infrastructure development, or 5.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2015.
This falls short of the annual $1340bn the ADB estimates they would need between 2016 and 2020 to bridge the infrastructure gap in their fast-growing economies.
That annual investment gap accounts for 2.4% of their combined GDP. However, without including China, which invested up to $686bn upgrading its infrastructure in 2016, the investment gap rises to 5% of the combined GDP of the other 24 countries surveyed.
“Fiscal reforms could generate additional revenues equivalent to 2% of GDP to bridge around 40% of the gap for these economies,” said the report.
