Estimates of Construction Infrastructure Stock for Cape Verde: 1980–2019

Abstract

Building and other construction assets constitute a significant part of a country’s physical and economic infrastructure. According to several writers, the knowledge of reliable data of building and other construction assets of a specific country or region is a crucial element for the long-term management of these assets. Built capital stock statistics at the national or international levels have been available for most countries of the world, both developed and less developed ones, for some time, but construction infrastructure stock statistics at the disaggregated level are very scarce, even for most developed countries. Furthermore, the methodologies to produce the estimates of built capital stock, at the international level, do not consider countries’ specificities. This paper discusses the methodologic issues for producing construction infrastructure stock statistics for Cape Verde, and makes estimates for the period 1980–2019. The paper outlines the Perpetual Inventory Method (PIM) used to produce capital estimation, data employed, and the assumptions made to estimate missing data. The paper analyses the level of the construction infrastructure stock estimates for Cape Verde, as well as their impact on the development pattern of the country’s construction industry, and suggests how further studies can enhance our comprehension of the relationship between construction investment and economic growth and development.

A Model for Construction Sector Development in Middle-Income Sub-Saharan African Countries

“…As noted by Calderón et al (2015), referring to the construction infrastructure segment of the construction industry, research has paid much less attention to the costs of infrastructure development than those devoted to quantifying the output impact of infrastructure. Government financial constraints are typical in low-and lower-middle income countries, which need to balance investment in infrastructure and other construction products (such as housing) with investment in other sectors of the economy, such as health and education (Lopes & Tavares, 2024). It appears that for developing countries that have already achieved an adequate level of built capital stock for efficient functioning of the economy, as well as to achieve infrastructure-linked SDGs targets, the minimum level of construction investment that accompanies the development of the general economy is both more economically sustainable and environmentally sustainable than the general pattern of construction investment that exceeds that minimum level.…”

“…Unlike gross capital stock (which does not account for asset depreciation), NCS is a key component of an economy's balance sheet within income and wealth accounting (OECD, 2009). Most modern works publishing capital stock statistics, both at national and international levels (see, e.g., Gormsen & Koijen, 2020;Di Pietro et al, 2021;Bontadini et al, 2023;Lopes et al, 2024), often rely on the perpetual inventory methodology (PIM) (OECD, 2009). In addition to the fact that NCS is the accumulation of GFCF over time, it is worth pointing out here the choice of GFCF in construction as an indicator of the activity of the construction industry rather than gross value added (GVA) in construction.…”