THE outpouring of support for a Chinese-led bank to finance infrastructure highlights a gap in Asia’s success story: From power-starved India to Thailand’s overburdened railways, developing economies face a shortage of basic facilities so severe that it threatens to hold back growth and living standards.

    Manila and other cities are choked with construction sites for office and apartment towers. But spending on roads, railways and other unglamorous but essential infrastructure collapsed after the 1997 financial crisis and has yet to recover.

    “The catch-up they need to do is still considerable,” said Ramesh Subramaniam, deputy director general of the Asian Development Bank’s Southeast Asia department.

    If spending fails to pick up, “then this could possibly have an impact on future growth,” he said. “Certainly it is going to reduce the competitiveness of the countries in the region.”

    On top of China’s planned infrastructure bank, which 57 countries want to join, the government of President Xi Jinping has launched initiatives to improve road, rail and sea links.

    Japan joined Washington in staying away from the Chinese bank. Instead, Tokyo responded in June by announcing its own credit package of US$110 billion for the region.

    The Asian Development Bank has estimated developing Asian economies need to invest US$8 trillion in the decade through 2020 or some 80 times the planned US$100 billion capital of Beijing’s bank.

    India is set to pass China this year as the world’s fastest-growing big economy. To keep that up, its government says, the nation of 1.2 billion people needs to spend US$1 trillion on infrastructure in the five years through 2017.

    Prime Minister Narendra Modi called in May for India to speed up building “all projects that will ensure a modern infrastructure backbone.”

    India’s most ambitious initiative is the US$100 billion Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor Project. It calls for creating seven industrial cities, high-speed railways, six airports and three sea ports.

    Nationwide, the government said India needs 450 new coal-fired power plants. It also plans a US$10.2 billion high-speed train to link Mumbai, the financial capital, with Ahmedabad, an industrial city to the north.

    In Vietnam, the ruling party in June approved a proposal for a US$15.8 billion second airport for its business capital, Ho Chi Minh City.

    To meet power demand that rises by 10 percent a year, state media say Vietnam needs to spend US$50 billion in the decade through 2020 and another US$75 billion over the next decade. They put Vietnam’s spending needs for highways at US$22.5 billion in 2015-20.

    Thailand has a 3 trillion baht (US$92 billion) building plan for 2015-22 that includes high-speed train routes that eventually will stretch from China in the north through Malaysia in the south to Singapore. It calls for expanding seaports and Bangkok’s commuter trains.

    In the Philippines, President Benigno Aquino III in May approved US$1.4 billion in spending for commuter rail in Manila and other projects. That brought the total for infrastructure investment to US$31.8 billion since Aquino took office in 2010.(SD-Agencies)