**Effective infrastructure scale-up, however, requires an assessment of performance of various infrastructure sectors.** Yet surprisingly, detailed and sufficiently extensive comparative data on multiple dimensions of infrastructure performance are only now emerging, and there are few systematic, comparative studies of infrastructure performance that would help the policymakers put their sector performance in perspective as a first step in charting future infrastructure policy. In particular, analyzing and _benchmarking international comparative performance_ can be a useful part of such assessments in order to identify dimensions (quantitative and qualitative) of infrastructure performance where SACU countries score better, on par, or worse than their relevant comparators. This paper aims to fill this gap in comparative literature on infrastructure performance. In large part, it synthesizes and extends earlier exercises for South Africa and Lesotho to the entire SACU region (Bogetić and Fedderke 2006b, and Bogetić 2006c). In addition, the paper speculates about the implications of the analysis for the regional infrastructure policy in the SACU countries.

**The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to systematically benchmark the SACU countries’ infrastructure performance in four major sectors––electricity, water and sanitation, information and communication technology, and transportation.** The comparison is made against the relevant group of comparator countries using a new international data base with objective and perception-based indicators of infrastructure performance from over 200 countries. Specifically, we seek to answer a number of relevant questions: How do SACU countries compare on major indicators of infrastructure sector performance against their relevant country groups? What do outcome indicators tell us about the relative strengths and weaknesses of SACU countries’ infrastructure vis-à-vis various income and geographical comparator groups of countries? Where are the largest deviations—positive and negative–– from the benchmarks and other comparators? And how does one interpret some of these comparisons 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 the SACU countries, its performance, and any need for reform. It would also help frame the ongoing discussion in the sub-region in a comparative perspective and based on well-defined and widely accepted performance indicators.

**The organization of the paper is the following.** In the next section, we first provide a brief description of the data and its caveats, and discuss the choice of the comparator groups of countries. Then, we provide a broad, _SACU-wide synthetic summary_ of individual country comparative exercises using average indicators for SACU countries and comparing them with all the world regions and the relevant income level country groupings (middle-income and lowincome countries). We also offer some reflections on the regional implications of such exercises.  Finally, in the following five detailed sections, we present individual benchmarking case studies for South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, and Swaziland. These studies provide international comparative assessments of these countries’ infrastructure performance in electricity, water and sanitation, information and communications technology, and transportation.

# **THE BENCHMARKING DATABASE**

**The data used for comparing SACU countries’ infrastructure performance comes from the World Bank research data base that was recently developed with a specific objective**

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