Yesterday, CoST Senior Latin American Manager, Manuel Gonzalez, highlighted CoST’s tools, and impact, at the 3rd OECD Ministerial Summit on Governance. The session focused on delivering value-for-money in infrastructure, discussing how Latin American countries can mitigate financial, social and environmental risks while maximising the benefits in public investments. 

Manuel’s question was focused on the conditions for breeding trust in project appraisal and selection. He responded by highlighting the importance of embedding transparency from the very start of an infrastructure project, and how our eight Latin American members work to support this. He discussed how CoST tools, such as our data standards and Infrastructure Transparency Index, reduce risk and strengthen decision making. He also spoke about how our members are using open data platforms to drive regional cooperation and build on multi-stakeholder working. 

Manuel closed the session by saying “The greatest value that public infrastructure can deliver is trust. Trust that public resources are used with integrity. Trust that decisions are technical and transparent. Trust that institutions are accountable and willing to improve. That is the core of value-for-money.” 

Other speakers included Andreas Schaal, Director for OECD Global Relations and Co-operation, and OECD Sherpa to the G7, G20, and APEC; Rafael Herz, Vice-President, Colombia’s National Development Bank, and Chair of the OECD Network of Senior Infrastructure and PPP Officials; Fabio Bertranou, Deputy Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, International Labour Organisations; Veronica Nilsson, General Secretary, The Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) to the OECD; Elvis Muñoz, Vice Minister of Institutional Strengthening, Dominican Republic and Ana Novik, Head of the Investment Division, OECD. 

This year alone, CoST’s International Secretariat and Latin American members have made significant strides in furthering transparency, accountability and participation, including through running workshops on social auditing, implementing the Infrastructure Transparency Index, reaffirmed government backing and support, increased membership, international recognition, the creation of new data platforms, alongside multiple other speaking engagements. 

This event is one of many speaking engagements that CoST has taken part this year, both in person and online, with partner organisations including OECD, OGP, CICA, FIDIC, Transparency International and more.