The Central Interoceanic hub is similar in shape to the Capricorn hub, but is located at a slightly higher latitude. It cuts across Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, and Chile, and has a total area of around 3.3 million km2, which equals 28% of the area of these countries and 19% of South America’s total area. The hub has an estimated population of 86.9 million inhabitants (36% of the 5 countries’ total population) and encompasses a number of major urban centers, including São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Asunción, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, La Paz-El Alto, and Tacna. The average population density is around 28.6 inhabitants per km2.
The Central Interoceanic hub currently contains 44 IIRSA projects, divided into 5 project clusters. At the time of IIRSA’s creation, the total estimated cost of the projects in the hub was $3.3 billion. Terrestrial transport projects (road and rail) predominate in the project clusters, with road paving constituting just over half of the estimated investment.
By conventional measures, this hub’s economy currently outperforms that of most any other hub in IIRSA, as it accounts for approximately 46% of the constituent countries’ GDP and 26% of South American GDP. The dominant sectors are agriculture (soybean, corn, livestock, poultry farming, fruits, and nuts), mining (copper, iron, tin, and zinc) and gas exploitation to generate electricity, for domestic consumption and export. IIRSA’s backers find these three sectors to have great growth potential, in volume, production quality, and support services. They also observe that the region’s biological wealth can serve as the basis for the development of biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, ecotourism, and environmental services for global markets, whereas its socio-cultural diversity can serve as the basis for cultural tourism development.