Colombia is Latin America’s third largest economy as measured by GDP (2012) and is endowed with abundant natural resources (OECD 2013). Colombia’s booming economy has been accompanied by a strengthening of its political institutions. Significant political reform since the early 1990s, beginning with the adoption of the Political Constitution of 1991, has facilitated the modernisation of economic activity. These reforms, together with the improved security situation, rising mining activity and strong world commodity prices, are supporting robust growth that will likely be sustained over the medium term.

Colombia has undergone profound change since proclaiming its Political Constitution in 1991, and has made significant progress in implementing successive waves of a goodgovernance agenda with initiatives that aim to strengthen its institutions and promote sustainable, inclusive growth in all regions of the country. In pursuing this agenda, the current Government of Colombia requested that the OECD conduct a Public Governance Review to offer advice on how Colombia can address its governance challenges effectively and efficiently over time.

Colombia is Latin America’s third largest economy as measured by GDP (2012) and is endowed with abundant natural resources (OECD 2013). Colombia’s booming economy has been accompanied by a strengthening of its political institutions. Significant political reform since the early 1990s, beginning with the adoption of the Political Constitution of 1991, has facilitated the modernisation of economic activity. These reforms, together with the improved security situation, rising mining activity and strong world commodity prices, are supporting robust growth that will likely be sustained over the medium term.

Colombia is Latin America’s third largest economy as measured by GDP (2012) and is endowed with abundant natural resources. Significant political reform since the early 1990s, beginning with the adoption of the Political Constitution of 1991, has facilitated the modernisation of economic activity. While the country has weathered the recent economic crisis well, its GDP growth rates may stabilise over the medium term, inequality remains acute, severe regional disparities persist, productivity remains stubbornly low and its fiscal environment could become tighter over time. This chapter provides an overview of Colombia’s economic, demographic, policy and fiscal challenges and opportunities, themselves influenced by the country’s history and its recent political evolution. It highlights the need to improve its governance capacity to enhance the country’s prospects of achieving “prosperity for all”, the current government’s medium-term strategic priority.

This chapter examines the role of Colombia’s Centre of Government (CoG) to implement and steer strategy, and highlights the impressive progress made in modernising both its institutional arrangements and its strategic approach to governance. The chapter examines the strength and agility of Colombia’s CoG institutions to lead the implementation of its National Development Plan. It highlights recent successes at governance reform, underscoring the need to improve whole-of-government co-ordination capability further by formalising capacity at the level of the Council of Ministers and the Presidency.

This chapter assesses the extent to which Colombia’s central government could improve its decision-making practices by building on its impressive achievements in whole-of-government performance-assessment, linking budgeting to strategyimplementation, and in whole-of-government audit and control to fight corruption. The chapter addresses the need for Colombia to enhance its strategic-foresight capacity by harnessing evidence on emerging challenges and trends over a ten to twenty-year planning horizon to inform its four-year development plans. It assesses Colombia’s capacity related to performance assessment, regulation and rule-making, and audit and control, highlighting recent successes at reform and suggesting that the central government build on these and build capacity in these areas sub-nationally.

This chapter highlights the importance of effective and efficient multi-level governance to enhance national development outcomes for citizens and businesses. The chapter highlights the history of Colombia’s approach to multi-level governance, noting the commitment of the central government to decentralisation through the political and fiscal empowerment of sub-national authorities since 1991. The chapter suggests that Colombia build on its successes in this area by focussing on ways to link national and regional strategy-setting and implementation more explicitly in the pursuit of development outcomes, and by building capacity sub-nationally to ensure vertical coherence so that all levels of government can contribute effectively and efficiently to addressing regional disparities and persistent poverty.

This concluding chapter summarises the analysis provided in the Review, and offers advice on a package of possible reforms to improve CoG co-ordination capacity, outcomes-based assessment, strategic foresight and audit and control functions, and strengthen multi-level governance. This chapter also offers advice on sequencing, staging and communications issues that can affect the successful implementation of Colombia’s good-governance agenda over time.