Fostering Infrastructure Development Aligned With Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

Infrastructure development plays a crucial role in accelerating the sustainable economic growth and development of a country. The increased provision of public infrastructure can help raise the GDP growth level by lowering production costs, enlarging markets, raising total factor productivity,and facilitating economic activities. Furthermore, infrastructure helps improve the living standards of the people by providing jobs and building the local suppliers' and developers’ capabilities, which contribute to reducing poverty and improving development outcomes. On the other hand, infrastructure is also crucial and lies at the core of efforts to achieve sustainable development. It encompasses many aspects of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as health, education, access to energy, as well as clean water and sanitation. The infrastructure improvement is implied in most of the targets of SDGs. The importance of infrastructure must take the sustainable development dimension into account; hence greater efficiencies can be obtained to achieve SDGs successfully.