Latin America hit by poor infrastructure

[fernando]

Latin America needs to triple its spending on infrastructure like roads and ports if it is to catch up with the dynamic East Asian economies, according to the World Bank.

A report from the Bank says that ageing infrastructure and under-investment are reducing Latin America's growth prospects and increasing poverty.


It says that infrastructure spending has been halved since the 1980s, and now amounts to just 2% of GDP, compared with the 4%-6% in other middle income countries.

The World Bank blames a series of "traumatic macro-economic crises" which led to drastic fiscal adjustments as the root cause of the problem.

And it adds that more money from the private sector will be needed despite the fact that private sector investment has "collapsed" and shows "no immediate signs of recovery".

The rest of the article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4197874.stm

[bcbm]

Clearly the reason infrastructure is underdeveloped has nothing to do with the fact that most Latin American countries are paying ridiculous amounts of "debt payment" to the IMF/WB and that forced structural readjustment is putting infrastructure into private hands who do nothing to improve it, or people's lives but do seem to be fond of raising prices.

[fernando]

Of course, you are right on that one. Private companies would create an infrastructure similar to what the old colonial powers did in their colonies, just a way to get the resources out of there and into their countries. This is also the reason why the US got so pissed off at Jacob Arbenz when he tried to improve the infrastructure in Guatemala, which meant the interests of United Fruit got endangered.

[bcbm]

Its sickening that the WB can issue statements like this with a straight face. The cause of many problems in Latin America is obviously their involvement, and yet they blame "traumatic macro-economic crises." Bastards. Hopefully Latin America will shoot down the AFTA agreement that is being proposed right now and tell the WB debt collectors to go home.

[fernando]

Well the problem now is that we dont have enough governments "loyal to the Revolution" yet, this does not necessarily mean a communist or socialist revolution, but more a countermovement against the pro US regimes. Another problem is that Latin America is too divided, this is something that hopefully one day will no longer exist, but between Latin American countries right now there is just too much bullshit, Peru is pissed off at Chile and Ecuador, Bolivia is pissed off at everyone...everyone is pissed off at Argentina :rolleyes: It are not only economic/military/political things, but also aspects of culture/society are like that.

Because we are still so divived it means we are an easy target for imperialists like the US government and the Western coorporation who want to exploit our lands.