Description:
Between 2000 and 2005, infrastructure
contributed less than 1 percentage point to the Central
African Republic's annual per capita GDP growth,
despite substantial spending in the road sector. Raising the
country's infrastructure endowment to that of the
region's middle-income countries could boost annual
growth by about 3.5 percentage points. The CAR has made
significant progress in the transport, water, power, and
information and communications technology (ICT) sectors. But
the high cost of fuel, which raises transportation and
energy costs, has been a vexing issue across all
infrastructure sectors. The CAR's most pressing
infrastructural challenge lies in the transport sector,
which relies heavily on neighboring countries and could
benefit from improved road conditions and enhanced
performance at the port of Douala in Cameroon. In the power
sector, the country suffers from a deteriorating
infrastructure stock that it can no longer afford to
maintain, and an inefficient and unreliable power supply.
Additional challenges include a need for improved
infrastructure in the water and sanitation and ICT sectors.
Addressing the CAR's infrastructure challenges will
require sustained expenditure of $346 million per year over
the next decade. The nation already spends around $134
million per year on infrastructure, with $37 million a year
lost to inefficiencies of various kinds. If those
inefficiencies were fully eliminated, the country's
annual infrastructure funding gap would be $183 million per
year. Improvements in funding, coupled with the prospect of
an economic rebound and prudent policies, could lift the
country from its fragile state back to and beyond the
prosperity standards it once enjoyed.