Financing Infrastructure in Metropolitan Areas of Latin America

The main focus of the event is to promote a debate about different forms of financing infrastructure in metropolitan areas, specially urban transport infrastructure. Latin American countries deal with similar problems in metropolis and metropolitan regions. Urban transport is the key point of the development of these areas. Transportation infrastructure is vital to the economic growth of the cities and to the well-being of its citizens. Transportation and cities influence each other in complex and dynamic ways. This co-dependence is stronger in megacities and metropolitan areas if we take into account that the majority of the small cities are “dormitory towns” with pendulum movements of the work force from these cities to the capital. Transportation projects financing in metropolitan areas is especially complex. Almost all of them include International or National Financial Institutions, loans, regulations, price caps, etc. In federative countries, like Brazil, this reality is more confuse because local governments are autonomous and have the competence to deal with urban transport. The goal of this event is to understand the status quo of this question in some Latin America countries (like Brazil, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina) in order to exchange experiences and try to identify how to overcome constraints and barriers. The participation of international institutions as ECLAC and international financial institutions as IDB and/or CAF will help to understand the limits and problems from another point of view.