Global infrastructure, capital spending to hit $9 trillion by 2025: study

By Moriah Costa WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Global spending on capital projects and infrastructure will shift from West to East, and jump to more than $9 trillion a year by 2025, according to a forecast released on Monday by accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. The growth will be driven by China, which overtook the United States as the top spender on capital and infrastructure in 2009, Pricewaterhouse said. Globally, this investment spending stood at just $4 trillion in 2012. "Emerging markets, especially China and other countries in Asia, without the burden of recovering from a financial crisis, will see much faster growth in infrastructure spending," Richard Abadie, global capital projects and infrastructure leader at Pricewaterhouse, said in a prepared statement. About $78 trillion is expected to be spent on capital projects and infrastructure globally between now and 2025, according to the study. Availability of funding and government finances, demographic factors, urbanization and natural resource endowments will all drive future infrastructure spending, Pricewaterhouse said. In the United States, capital projects and infrastructure spending is expected to reach $1 trillion annually by 2025, growing an average of 3.5 percent a year, according to the firm. U.S. infrastructure spending will face constraints from relatively tight government finances, but capital spending elsewhere will get a lift from the nation's shale oil boom and investment in telecommunications, it said. (Reporting by Moriah Costa; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)