Latin American infrastructure gap: IDB looks inward

Without sufficient investment, Latin America will see its ports reach their full capacity by 2020, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. As such, the expansion of the Panama Canal is “a game changer,” noted Esteban Diez-Roux, principal transportation specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank.

Diez-Roux spoke with Devex at the 2013 annual meeting of the IDB and Inter-American Investment Corp. boards of governors, held in Panama City. He discussed what the bank is doing to help address the big infrastructure gap in the region.

“We have to work in coordination with other people, not just the transport people or the infrastructure people, but to make sure that, for example, trade facilitation people are also working in conjunction with us to make things better,” he said. “If you don’t coordinate efforts, individual efforts really don’t make that much sense.”

Watch more of our interview with Esteban Diez-Roux, part of our ongoing video interview series recorded live at the IDB-IIC annual gathering, and check the rest of our coverage on the event.