Transportation

Argentina’s transport infrastructure is relatively advanced. There are over 230,000 km (144,000 mi) of roads (not including private rural roads) of which 72,000 km (45,000 mi) are paved, and 1,575 km (980 mi) are expressways, many of which are privatized tollways.

Having doubled in length in recent years, multilane expressways now connect several major cities with more under construction. Expressways are, however, currently inadequate to deal with local traffic, as 9.5 million motor vehicles were registered nationally as of 2009 (240 per 1000 population).

The railway network has a total length of 34,059 km (21,170 mi). After decades of declining service and inadequate maintenance, most intercity passenger services shut down in 1992 when the rail company was privatized, and thousands of kilometers of track (excluding the above total) are now in disuse.

Metropolitan rail services in and around Buenos Aires remained in great demand, however, owing in part to their easy access to the Buenos Aires subway, and intercity rail services are currently being reactivated along numerous lines.

Inaugurated in 1913, the Buenos Aires Metro was the first subway system built in Latin America and the Southern Hemisphere. No longer the most extensive in South America, its 52.3 km (32.5 mi) of track carry nearly a million passengers daily.

Argentina has around 11,000 km (6,835 mi) of navigable waterways, and these carry more cargo than do the country’s freight railways. This includes an extensive network of canals, though Argentina is blessed with ample natural waterways, as well; the most significant among these being the Río de la Plata, Paraná, Uruguay, Río Negro and Paraguay rivers.

Aerolíneas Argentinas is the country’s main airline, providing both extensive domestic and international service. Austral Líneas Aéreas is Aerolíneas Argentinas’ subsidiary, with a route system that covers almost all of the country. LADE is a military-run commercial airline that flies extensive domestic services.

See Also: Transportation | Travel in Argentina

Energy

The electricity sector in Argentina constitutes the third largest power market in Latin America. It relies mostly on thermal generation (54% of installed capacity) and hydropower generation (41%), with new renewable energy technologies barely exploited.

The country still has a large untapped hydroelectric potential. However, the prevailing natural gas-fired thermal generation is at risk due to the uncertainty about future gas supply.

Faced with rising electricity demand (over 6% annually) and declining reserve margins, the government of Argentina is in the process of commissioning large projects, both in the generation and transmission sectors.

To keep up with rising demand, it is estimated that about 1,000 MW of new generation capacity are needed each year. An important number of these projects are being financed by the government through trust funds, while independent private initiative is still limited as it has not fully recovered yet from the effects of the Argentine economic crisis.

The electricity sector was unbundled in generation, transmission and distribution by the reforms carried out in the early 1990s. Generation occurs in a competitive and mostly liberalized market in which 75% of the generation capacity is owned by private utilities. In contrast, the transmission and distribution sectors are highly regulated and much less competitive than generation.