GIH: China to account for a third of global infrastructure investment by 2040
Infrastructure investment requirements 2016-2040: 10 largest markets, share of world total.
China will remain the world's biggest infrastructure market come 2040, with US$26 trillion required to invest in the sector, Global Infrastructure Hub said in a report.
The report, titled Global Infrastructure Outlook, estimated that the global infrastructure investment requirement over the next 25 years is US$94 trillion, with Asia accounting for half of the demand.
China alone accounts for more than half of the Asia demand, largely because of economic growth and urbanization.
In China, the proportion of investment going towards rail and road infrastructure could expand in the future, accounting for US$18 trillion of the total, while electricity may account for a slightly smaller share of investment than in the past, the report said.
Rail will also play a prominent role within the Chinese infrastructure market as the country continues to develop a network of high-speed lines to link its major cities.
Under current trends, US$5.4 trillion of investment in rail infrastructure is expected between 2016 and 2040.
China's sectoral pattern of infrastructure investment (2007-2040)
GIH said China wouldn't need to accelerate infrastructure investment significantly to meet the target, except with regard to the electricity sector and airports.
It is estimated that China’s future infrastructure spending will be around 5.2 percent of GDP in order to meet new demand, compared with 7.3 percent between 2007 and 2015.
This forecast is in line with a trend for slower fixed asset investment growth in China under the government's initiative to shift from an investment-driven economy to a consumption driven one, and to reduce the pile-up of government debts.
The National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planner, approved 87 fixed-asset investment projects with a total investment value of 463.8 billion yuan in the first half of this year, similar to the 461.6 billion yuan in the same period last year.
Fixed asset investment rose 8.6 percent year-on-year in the first half, 0.6 percentage points slower than the first quarter, data with the National Bureau of Statistics showed.
