This item was submitted by our CoST Honduras colleagues.

CoST Honduras recently presented the results of it first assurance process at an event attended by more than 120 invited representatives of government, private sector, civil society, international cooperation and media.

The assurance report covers the information disclosed from 13 road projects on the Information and Monitoring System of Public Works and Oversight Contracts (SISOCS) platform. The projects had a total value of USD $700m and were funded by the World Bank, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration and the Inter-American Development Bank.

The study highlighted the contribution of the assurance process to increasing transparency with disclosure increasing from 50% at the beginning, up to 84% on completion of the process. This is especially impressive as the procuring entities were required to disclose proactively all items of the CoST Infrastructure Data Standard and the list of information for reactive disclosure. Honduras is the only country to require the list of information for reactive disclosure to be disclosed proactively.

Also, as an added value of CoST Honduras to the assurance processes, the MSG has developed a process to enable comparative analysis between projects to determine the level of efficiency and effectiveness of each one, making a classification of projects that require urgent attention from decision makers (red), those which require closer monitoring by procuring entities (yellow) and those going on track in terms of costs, physical performance, financial performance, changes in commonly acceptable parameters and disclosure percentage (green). The Government has committed to acting on those projects that require urgent attention.

The event was attended by Chrik Poortman, Chair of CoST International Board and it was led by our Champion Minister of Infrastructure Roberto Ordonez, both of whom, before the disclosure event, had the opportunity to share a high-level meeting with the President of the Republic, Juan Orlando Hernandez.

The Honduras Multi-Stakeholder Group will now disseminate the assurance results widely in order to build public demand for greater accountability and social audit processes.