The Jalisco state government and several Guadalajara metro-area municipal governments have committed themselves to the Infrastructure Transparency Initiative (CoST), a U.K.-developed program that seeks to improve transparency and accountability in public infrastructure.
A “working group” comprised of representatives from the public and private sectors was set up this week to oversee the establishment of the initiative.
CoST tries to set a new industry standard for institutional investment cost data. It works with government, industry and civil society to promote the disclosure, validation and interpretation of data from infrastructure projects. This helps to inform and empower citizens, and enables them to hold decision-makers to account.
CoST provides a set of templates and tools which together form a framework investors can use to receive standardized cost and charges information from asset managers.
CoST began in the United Kingdom in 2018, soon expanded to other European countries, and has now been implemented in nine Latin American nations.