Global Infrastructure Investment: Private Participation in Developing Countries

The World Bank's PPI Project Database records infrastructure projects with private participation in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). It holds data on more than 10,000 projects in 137 countries, covering energy, telecommunications, transport, and water and sewerage [2]. Investment figures are total commitments made at contract signature or financial closure. They include both the private and public shares of a project. They are not annual spending [6].

In 2024, PPI investment reached USD 100.7 billion across 315 projects. This equals 0.27% of the combined GDP of all LMICs (USD 37.5 trillion) [1]. It was 16% above the USD 87.1 billion recorded for 2023 and 20% above the past five-year average of USD 83.7 billion [1]. It was also the first year above USD 100 billion since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic [1].

When the World Bank first released 2023 data in May 2024, it put private infrastructure investment in LMICs at USD 86 billion, down 5% from 2022 [3]. The 2024 report gives a revised figure of USD 87.1 billion for 2023 [1]. For comparison, PPI investment in 2017 was USD 93.3 billion across 304 projects, 37% more than in 2016 [4].

In 2024, ICT investment commitments rose 35% to an all-time high of USD 10.3 billion. They covered 32 projects in 17 countries [1].

The Global Infrastructure Hub's Infrastructure Monitor 2024 also tracks private infrastructure investment, in both high-income and low- and middle-income countries. It uses a project dataset built with Realfin plus World Bank PPI data. It reports that renewables and transport dominate private investment, while digital infrastructure and energy transmission and storage grew at record rates [5]. Its LMIC values are slightly higher than PPI values because it also covers social infrastructure [5].

Our figures come from the World Bank PPI 2024 Annual Report [1], the PPI database pages [2][6], the World Bank press release of May 2024 [3] and the PPI 2017 Annual Report [4]. Values are in nominal USD and count investment commitments in the year of financial or contractual closure [6]. The database covers LMICs only, so these are not totals for global infrastructure investment. Some published values change between report editions. We use the latest edition's figure for 2023. The Global Infrastructure Hub monitor is cited for context only [5]. This edition does not include India's union budget capital expenditure. The report contains no FREEE.REPORT calculations.