Country: Global / Non-Specific
This World Bank report was commissioned to inform this past weekend’s G20 conversations. It underlines that lack of maintenance of infrastructure assets has real costs and repercussions on people, firms, and economic systems. Moreover, regular maintenance is an essential contributor to infrastructure resilience as countries face the impacts of climate change. We emphasize that more spending alone is insufficient, unless accompanied by new approaches in planning, costing, and delivering maintenance, operations, and repairs—drawing lessons from private participation in infrastructure.
The report frames the World Bank’s contribution to the G20’s Policy Agenda under Italy’s presidency on Infrastructure Maintenance and draws on several recent World Bank reports, including Beyond the Gap and Lifelines. Building on the World Bank’s operational and analytical work, this report offers evidence that inadequate or deferred maintenance of infrastructure assets have costs and repercussions that affect the growth and well-being of people, firms, and economic systems as a whole. Regular maintenance is an essential contributor to infrastructure resilience. Further, this report highlights that more spending alone is not sufficient, unless it is accompanied by new approaches in planning, costing, and delivering maintenance, operations, and repairs. In doing so, the report draws lessons from private participation in infrastructure. Lastly, the report identifies synergies and trade-offs that come to play when pursuing infrastructure maintenance as the global economies enter the post-COVID recovery phase.
Updated: May 10, 2023