Regional Integration: Better transport and logistics support stronger regional integration. World Bank (2009a: 18) argues that falling transport costs have coincided with greater economic concentration within countries and have caused trade with neighbors to become even more important. This occurs because of the growing importance of scale economies in production and transport. Guerrero et al (2009) argue that one explanation for why Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) countries have lagged in their integration into the world trading system is their inability to cope with a globalization process that is inherently transport intensive and where supply chains are now being organized on a global scale.
Development and poverty reduction: Basic foodstuffs, as well as agricultural inputs like fertilizers, and development products like medicines, all need to be moved quickly and costeffectively in order to promote human development aims. Better transportation logistics enables faster deliveries of goods and services as well as a reduction in consumer prices. Transport infrastructure also provides rural areas with access to greater participation in development opportunities that leads to a more balanced spatial development. Adequate logistics access will promote rural entrepreneurship and trade (UNESCAP 2008). However, as questioned by Bafoil (2010) in analyzing the situations in the Central and Eastern Europe and the Great Mekong sub-region, transport infrastructure does not link to regional development by itself. Under certain conditions, infrastructure could also deepen the territorial inequalities and increase the relative poverty, or sometimes absolute poverty, by marginalizing the poor further because of unequal distribution of the fruits of development.