Honduras Inversiones to Promote Greater Transparency and Public Accountability

Today the Government of the Republic of Honduras, with the support of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), launched Honduras Inversiones, an interactive digital platform for transparency, participation and accountability in the use of public resources. Developed with input from civil society organizations and journalists from various media outlets, the tool was launched at the annual meeting of the Network for Public Integrity in Latin America and the Caribbean, which this year centers on using innovation to improve oversight of government work.

The platform is part of InvestmentMap, a regional initiative granting citizens access to information to monitor budget spending, institutional procurement processes, and public investment projects underway in their countries.  Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Paraguay, Perú and the Dominican Republic have all recently launched equivalent platforms. Other countries, such as Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Bahamas, Panama and Ecuador, are currently developing similar initiatives.

“For our country, this platform represents an important step towards transparency and more effective and higher-quality public spending. It’s a powerful tool for citizen oversight because all information is directly linked to our systems. Whenever projects are added to the National Public Investment System, they’ll automatically show up on the platform,” said Elizabeth Rivera, deputy secretary of finance and budget of the Ministry of Finance.

The Honduras Inversiones platform collects information directly from the Financial Administration System and the National Public Investment System, managed by the Ministry of Finance, as well as from the Open Contracting Portal operated by the Regulatory Office for Contracting and Procurement of the Transparency and Anti-Corruption Ministry.

“Strengthening state capacity is closely tied to increasing transparency and integrity, as it allows citizens to play and active role in monitoring public spending. This provides the government with up-to-date information on execution and the impact of this spending on the ground. We hope this tool will prove an important asset for improving the performance of public investment projects in the country, as it has in other countries where the platform has been launched,” said María José Jarquín, IDB representative in Honduras.

A recent study by the InvestmentMap platform in Costa Rica found that it can help accelerate the financial progress of projects.

Honduras Inversiones presents budget execution information for the current fiscal period and three previous periods, enabling the Honduran government to meet international standards like the Open Budget Index and the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability Assessment. Through georeferenced data, the platform can display current public investment projects on a map of the country. It also provides public access to photos and procurement process documents supplied by the projects’ implementing units so that citizens can check their progress. Finally, the platform features a section explaining the 2023 Public Investment Budget and how officials set their budgeting priorities.

The public procurement information allows users to analyze competitive bidding processes and their different stages, as well as how they are linked to the budget and their payment process. This feature is made is possible by the Open Contracting Data Standard of the Open Contracting Partnership, which makes information available online and in open file formats to maximize procurement transparency and facilitate in-depth data analysis.

Honduras Inversiones was developed through close coordination between the Private Secretary to the Office of the President, Ministry of Finance, Transparency and Anti-Corruption Ministry, the Regulatory Office for Contracting and Procurement of the Government of Honduras, and the IDB’s InvetmentMap team.

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