The report, Capacity to Grow: Transport Infrastructure Needs for Future Trade Growth, states that hinterland connections will face the largest capacity challenges. These will be strained in Asia and Africa, in particular, where estimated traffic growth is highest and the limited availability of surface freight infrastructure is becoming an impediment to trade activity. The need to expand capacity will be particularly pertinent for infrastructure close to ports, and such infrastructure will need to almost triple in Asia and Africa by 2050 to provide the performance levels seen in 2010.

Growth in trade is expected to outpace GDP growth over the next 40 years, although at a lower scale than during pre-crisis decades. World trade is estimated to grow at around 3.5 percent annually compared with 6.9 percent over the period 1990-2007. The report suggests that container traffic related to international trade will double by 2030 while by 2050 the additional traffic will be nearly 300 percent of that today. This translates to over one billion TEU by 2030 and to nearly 2.2 billion TEU by 2050.

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