Countries of Mesoamerica to Benefit from Interactive Infrastructure Platform

• The platform visualizes georeferenced data on physical infrastructure projects for regional integration; climate change; development variables; and primary value chains.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Mesoamerica Integration and Development Project have launched the Infrastructure and Transport Hub (HIT, its Spanish acronym), a functional tool to facilitate the development of infrastructure and mobility services with a multimodal approach. It aims to boost regional logistics integration to improve competitiveness.

Presented on June 7 in Panamá City, Panamá, the platform is part of the Mesoamerica Project’s Transport, Mobility and Logistics Agenda, led by its Regional Technical Commission on Transport.

The platform, which is free for public use, is currently in its first phase. It contains data from Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic.

HIT serves as a powerful investment-planning tool, with constantly updated data and a repository of information for countries, with the aim of supporting decision-making on regional infrastructure issues. It also constitutes a knowledge base for productive sectors and citizens.

What information does the platform contain?
The platform consists of 7 modules, providing information on regional physical infrastructure (ports, airports, logistics), road inventories, principal value chains, amounts and products mobilized, and a portfolio of regional projects (both potential and in the IDB's pipeline), as well as climate change variables that impact regional infrastructure, such as precipitation intensity, sea level and temperatures.

HIT also allows users to view measures adopted during the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 and to access data on the relationship between infrastructure and demographic and socioeconomic variables (poverty, education level and gender, among others).

Tomás Bermúdez, the general manager of the IDB’s Central America, Haiti, Mexico, Panama and Dominican Republic Country Department and the Bank’s Representative in Panama, highlighted the platform’s importance for the development and competitiveness of the region. "The development of HIT is part of our commitment to countries to provide effective and innovative technical support for making decisions about investing in infrastructure," he said.

Lidia Fromm Cea, the Mesoamerica Project’s executive director, said, "The HIT platform is valuable not only for its impact on commercial activity, but also because it takes into account environmental components that are crucial for the holistic development of the region’s countries."