Latin America Sees Fewer Power Kickoffs, but With Higher Values, Amid COVID-19, an Industrial Info Market Brief

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As COVID-19 spread across Latin America, the number of capital-spending projects in the region's Power Industry to begin construction dropped from 85 in March to 50 in April. Despite this decline, the total investment involved rose 16% from $2.59 billion in March and April 2019 to $2.99 billion in the same two months of 2020.

This contradiction can be explained by analyzing different types of capital spending. Although spending on in-plant projects like retrofits, upgrades and modernizing plunged from $184.8 million in 2019 to only $2.75 million in 2020, the capital spending on grassroot and plant-expansion projects rose from $1.8 billion in 2019 to $2.08 billion in 2020, and capital spending on transmission and distribution projects with kickoffs in March and April rose from $602.66 million in 2019 to $911.58 million in 2020.

Click here for a list of active, related projects, and see graph below for a year-over-year breakdown, by project type.