Infrastructure and Growth in South Africa: Benchmarking, Productivity and Investment Needs, paper presented at Economic Society of South Africa (ESSA) Conference, Durban, 9/7-9/2005

The paper provides three principal results. First, we benchmark South African infrastructure performance in terms of access, pricing, and quality against key comparator groups of countries using the most recent World Bank benchmarking data base (2005). Second, we establish clear empirical links between infrastructure and productivity using South African time-series data. And third, we estimate long-run demand for electricity and telephony using a panel of 52 low-income and middle- income countries for the period 1980-2002 and then project investment needs in these sectors until 2010. Our projections indicate average annual electricity generating requirement of US$0.5 billion or about 0.2% of GDP, and US$1.98 billion or 0.75% of GDP for telephony.