How does Lesotho’s performance compare against its relevant country groups, especially low-income countries? What do outcome indicators tell us about the relative strengths and weaknesses of Lesotho’s infrastructure vis-à-vis various income and geographical comparator groups of countries? Where are the largest deviations—positive and negative––from the benchmark group and other comparators? What is Lesotho’s comparative performance in rural and urban areas? And how does one interpret some of these comparisons within Lesotho’s country-specific context in order for it to be useful for policy purposes? The answers to these questions are likely to provide important building blocks towards a more complete assessment of the state of infrastructure in Lesotho, its performance, and any need for reform.

The next section discusses the data, their caveats, and the choice of the comparator groups of countries. The following sections discuss preliminary assessments of infrastructure performance in electricity, water and sanitation, information and communications technology, and roads transportation. The concluding section contains summary remarks.

# **The benchmarking database**

The data used for comparing Lesotho’s infrastructure performance comes from the World Bank research data base that was recently developed with a specific objective to be used for this type of benchmarking exercise (Eustache and Goicoechea, 2005). The database pulls together the latest available observations from a number of well documented, specialized data sources that contain more detailed data with longitudinal information. The data base aims to measure _sector performance_ by focusing on sector _outcomes_ — **_access, affordability/pricing, and quality_** (technical or perceived). It also provides information on sector institutional reform. Data covers 207 countries (although coverage varies by sector and indicator)<sup>1</sup> with a limited number of variables<sup>2</sup> measuring sector outcomes.

For the purpose of benchmarking Lesotho, we compare its available indicators of infrastructure performance with all the world geographical comparator groups--Sub-Saharan Africa, OECD, South Asia, East Asia & Pacific, Middle East & North Africa, Latin America & the Caribbean, Europe and Central Asia, and the world—and four groups of countries clustered by the level of income per capita— low income, middle income, upper middle income, and OECD countries. Therefore, both region and income level are used as comparator criteria. The main benchmarking group on which much of the discussion is focused is low-income country group to which Lesotho belongs. Because of the strong association between infrastructure and income level, this is economically the most meaningful group comparator. This is supplemented by relevant comparisons with other income groups and major world regions to provide a wider geographical comparison of Lesotho’s infrastructure performance. Finally, where comparative rural/urban indicators are available, we benchmark Lesotho’s infrastructure performance for both rural and urban areas.

As with any comparative indicators summarizing performance in a vast number of different countries, interpretation must be made carefully and with caution. Some of the variations between the indicators may reflect other factors that may make single indicator comparison less revealing, or even misleading. The database itself has its limitations detailed in the cited World Bank analysis by Estache and Goicoechea.<sup>3</sup> In addition, where appropriate, we explain or qualify how specific circumstances in

> 1 The percentage of available country observations from the total number of countries (207) varies by indicators from close to 90% for measures of access to roads, 85-95% for ICT access and pricing measures, 75-85% for access to water, and 60% for access to electricity.  The quality indicators generally show lower degrees of completeness than those of access.

> 2 The numbers of indicators in each sector are as follows: 7 in energy, 4 in water & sanitation, 12 in ICT, and 12 in transport. 3 For example, the database reports the latest information available between 1997 and 2002, corresponding to arithmetic averages of available data.  In some cases, more recent within country information may be available that is not yet reflected

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