The purpose of this study is to providean integral evaluation of recent economic developments inColombia's infrastructure sectors. Specifically, thestudy covers the electricity, natural gas,telecommunications, water, and transport sectors. Colombiapresents high levels of access to basic household servicescompared to its Latin American peers, while access toservices in the country is relatively equitable across theincome spectrum, but relatively inequitable between urbanand rural areas. However, Colombia lags behind its peers asregards paved roads, internet access, and electricitygeneration capacity. Energy use is strongly driven by theunderlying structure of the economy, and paved road densityis driven by the internal spatial distribution of economicactivity. Moreover, there is mixed evidence as to therelative quality, and efficiency of Colombia'sinfrastructure service providers. The report stipulatesColombia needs to enhance its performance on productiveinfrastructure, while preserving its achievements in thesocial sphere. On the basis of this comparative assessment,the challenge for Colombia would appear to lie primarily inreorienting its infrastructure investments towards theproductive sectors, without jeopardizing its strongperformance in social infrastructure. While the privatesector can play an important role in addressing the deficitsin energy and telecommunications, the key challenge offinancing improvements in the road network will necessarilyremain a predominantly public responsibility, given that thelimited scope for toll roads has already been largely exploited.
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