Felipe Montoro Jens was one of the infrastructure projects experts in attendance at the Special Meeting of the Governors. This meeting, held on March 24, was assembled by the Inter-American Development Bank which has been heavily investing in infrastructure projects in Latin America for the past several years. They have loaned Brazil, for instance, around $12.9 billion which has been used to build public projects such as roads, schools, and sanitation. These are done through Private-Public Partnership (PPP) where the government hires a private firm to do the work and maintain the finished project. Visit on his twitter for more updates.
Dyogo Oliveira, Brazil’s Minister of Planning, Development and Management, is a very vocal supporter of PPPs. He said during this meeting that they are critical to getting projects completed. According to Felipe Montoro Jens, Dyogo Oliveira stated that it is very important that financial guarantees are put in place so that private companies will invest in infrastructure projects.
One of the biggest reasons that the nations making up Latin America are ramping up PPPs and infrastructure projects is that the next industrial revolution is upon us, said Felipe Montoro Jens. Latin American nations wishing to take part in this revolution need the infrastructure in place to support it. They need to build roadsin order to move people and goods efficiently, particularly across national borders. They also need sanitation projects completed in order to provide water.
Felipe Montoro Jens says that there have been around 1,000 PPP infrastructure projects completed over the past ten years. These projects are valued at around $360 billion. There are additional infrastructure projects which have been approved, he says, but they haven’t been able to attract the private capital they need to get started. Attracting this private capital is critical if Latin America will take part in the Industry 4.0 revolution.