At the end of November, CONPES 4060 was approved, which gives free rein to the fifth generation of concessions (5G) or Bicentennial Concessions. The document contains measures that must be advanced in the next 10 years (from 2022) to promote intermodal development, optimize social and environmental management, strengthen governance, promote new sources of financing under the public-private partnership scheme (PPP)., among other things.

The development of the 14 projects of the first wave of 5G will be marked by that document. It is worth remembering that this is the first generation of concessions that includes modes other than the road, with four airport projects, two navigability projects, and one rail project, with an investment of $21.8 billion in CAPEX.Now, these more than 80 pages of CONPES, which are the result of more than a year’s work, leave on the table a series of promises that will be essential to define the course of infrastructure in Colombia. In addition to intermodalism, the document proposes four pillars of sustainability.

The first has to do with institutional sustainability to promote strengthening and governance, collaborative work is one of the premises.

The second has to do with social sustainability in order to create projects that do take into account the socioeconomic reality of the communities that are in the areas of influence of the projects. Another promise has to do with gender equity with the goal of strengthening job opportunities for rural women.

The third is based on the search for an infrastructure that is resilient to climate change. With the Sustainable Contribution program, measures will be adopted to reduce Greenhouse Gases. Finally, sustainable financing is mentioned, which includes proposing strategies to promote the financing of projects with sustainable thematic bonds.The experts draw attention to the importance of materializing all the proposals of CONPES, since they assure that Colombia has made great progress on paper, but this is not necessarily evidenced in the results.