Albania: The Linkage between Infrastructure Development and Sector Strategic Objectives is Crucial for Achieving Results and Sustainability in the Sector

Abstract

A key question in the development theory is why the linkage between the infrastructure and development is not strong in developing countries? This leads to the next logical question, what is the impact of infrastructure development on the growth of economy, and how we measure it. The importance of the linkage between the infrastructure and development is addressed quite extensively in the international literature. Today, many quantitative and qualitative assessments are used at length to analyze and assess the impacts of programs and projects are having on the sector development, economic and social distribution, social change, fiscal balance, environmental change, quality of public services and overall quality of life. There are serious issues at the project level, as well as at the sectorial and national level relating to design, implementation, and capacity building that relates to the achievements of the development objectives and their sustainability. How do we link the objectives with expected outcomes, and how the target values set in the programs and projects would improve those at sectorial or regional levels? The international organizations try to capture these linkages through their evaluation of programs and projects they finance in the developing countries, based on a standard methodology and criteria. The hypothesis of this paper is: “The impact of the programs and projects on the sector strategic objectives is assured if the linkage between the infrastructure and development objectives at the project and sectoral levels is strong at all stages of the project cycle, sector policies are built in the project, and the sector reforms continues steadily.” DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n3p659