How to improve the infrastructure in MED11: Four scenarios for each country

Lack of adequate infrastructure is a significant inhibitor to increased trade of the countries of the Mediterranean region. In the report "Transport Infrastructure for MED11 Countries" Robin Carruthers argues that bringing their transport infrastructure to standards comparable with countries of a similar per capita GDP will be costly but worthwhile.

Robin Carruthers, former Lead Transport Economist in the World Bank, provides estimates of the costs to the MED11 countries of bringing the transport infrastructure to specified standards, and of the macro-economic benefits of those investments.

The report provides a comparison of the current quantities of six types of transport infrastructure with international, and an estimation of the additional quantities needed to reach the benchmarks. The author also estimates the cost of that infrastructure and expresses it as a percentage of GDP. Finally he makes tentative estimates of how much trade might be generated and how this might impact on GDP. All the estimates are made for each MED11 country and for each of four scenarios.

The author comes to the conclusion that the investment in transport is worthwhile in all the scenarios, but also that the marginal increases in investment have positive returns, that it, the higher investment in the Common Development scenario brings greater per unit benefits than the lower (but still worthwhile) investment in the other scenarios.

Read more in the full CASE Network Report no. 108 "Transport Infrastructure for MED11 Countries" by Robin Carruthers.