Fernando de Querol Cumbrera
Research expert covering construction, loans, leasing, savings, and debt
Global infrastructure - statistics & facts
Having quality infrastructure and investing in its construction and modernization is essential for any country's economy to grow and to keep its population satisfied. Infrastructure enables the circulation of information, people, goods, and services all around the world through telecom towers, roads, bridges, railways, airports, and ports. In addition to that, energy infrastructure powers our homes, buildings, as well as our private and commercial activities. Singapore and the Netherlands were two of the countries with the highest rates of satisfaction with their road infrastructure.
Telecommunications infrastructure
Telecommunications infrastructure has become even more indispensable in the past decades as each year more of our social interactions and economic transactions happen online. Thus, the most valued telecom infrastructure companies in the world, such as Huawei, have gained great power and notoriety. But there has also been plenty of controversy regarding what companies are allowed to supply 5G and the ownership of other critical infrastructure. Such vetoes of certain foreign companies over risk concerns benefits local providers of infrastructure, such as Cisco in the United States, but it also reduces competition and increases prices.Spending on transportation infrastructure
Although there is sometimes a lot of focus on the number of new roads, streets, bridges, airports, railways, ports, tunnels or highways built, spending on the renovation of those types of infrastructure should not be overlooked either. China was by far the country with the highest investment in new road infrastructure in 2022. Investing in new infrastructure is particularly important for countries that do not already have a sufficiently large railway, road, and airport network. However, developed countries that already have a very extensive network, but which may sometimes be old or structurally deficient, may need to prioritize repair and maintenance projects. For example, there were over 222,000 bridges in need of replacement or rehabilitation in the U.S. in 2023. However, that number has been going down thanks to the spending on the renovation of transport infrastructure. That means that each country has different infrastructure needs that need to be considered separately to ensure that it is modern, safe, and resilient.
