"ROLE OF INFRASTRUCTURE IN ECONOMIC GROWTH AND POVERTY REDUCTION" LESSONS LEARNED FROM PRSPs OF 33 COUNTRIES"

Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) are the driving force behind the overall development strategy of many developing countries. The report focuses on 33 countries that had completed their report as of 1 December, 2003. The author reports: "All reviewed PRSPs underline that economic growth is a necessary but not sufficient condition for poverty reduction..... infrastructure interventions are mainly focused on the development of the rural/agricultural and private sectors...... Infrastructure development strategies in the rural/agricultural sector include the development of rural roads, electricity, and telecommunications...... support for Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (SMEs), is also one of the prevailing strategies in PRSPs.....Infrastructure interventions for SME development are designed to build the enabling business environment..... They mainly focus on the improvement and expansion of roads to facilitate logistics and the development of electricity and telecommunication networks..... All PRSPs underline the importance of other infrastructure interventions in the social and/or economic sectors. In particular, most PRSPs recommend improving the water and sanitation systems and expanding them to better reach the poor. Several PRSPs also underline that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can play an important role in human resources development (e.g., by improving education systems), in increasing access to markets and attracting investment, and in promoting good governance by strengthening information sharing and transparency (for example, through egovernment). The major challenge for infrastructure development strategies in PRSPs is whether they can introduce sustainable maintenance mechanisms by systematically securing financial and human resources...... the cost of inaction due to lack of financing can dramatically curtail efforts to achieving the Millennium Development Goals." By Namomichi Murooka, DAC Network on Poverty Reduction, OECD, October 2004. (PDF, 43 pages.)

The human resources which are likely to be hardest to train, most in demand, and providing the best overall return to investment in education are engineers!