ABSTRACT
Infrastructure is a key ingredient both to economic growth and quality of life. Infrastructure is “an umbrella term for many activities referred to as social overhead capital,” and includes public utilities, such as power, piped water supply and sanitation and sewerage, public works, such as roads and dams, and other transport sectors, such as railways, urban transport, and airports (World Bank, 1994, p. 2). This chapter focuses on an essential component of an effective infrastructure network—the ability to operate and maintain the infrastructure properly. The tendency in much of the earlier infrastructure literature was to focus on infrastructure as capital investments and thus the core of the capital project cycle rather than to think of a series of infrastructure services that are produced using a set of inputs that includes physical capital. 1 In the production function context, operations and maintenance are another group of inputs that are essential to reaping the value of the services. Viewing operations and maintenance expenditures in this fashion highlights their role in service provision but also heightens the importance of political economy considerations and service assignment responsibilities in financing effective services.
