...Real Need Is for Upgrades: The main infrastructure challenge for developed economies is to renew and upgrade their ageing and sometimes failing infrastructure. Many critical pieces of infrastructure are in place already, demographics are stable and economic growth prospects are weak, so the focus will be more on upgrades than on new facilities. Finding Revenue Sources is Key: The funding for these upgrades needs to be raised from users or taxpayers, the only two ultimate sources of payment. This makes necessary a political determination of who should pay for facilities that only a fraction of the population uses, that will be used by many others in the future, and, when it comes to replacing existing assets, have already been paid for. This is true for public procurement as well as public-private partnership (PPP) frameworks. Financing Not the Main Issue: There is plenty of capital available to finance bankable projects: the infrastructure gap is most obvious in countries where capital...
