Construction Sector Transparency Initiative (CoST) expects the first reports on the efficiency of spending on road projects to be delivered at the end of June. CoST Ukraine’s Director Natalia Forsiuk announced this in an interview with the CFTS portal.
"The first reports by our verifiers will be delivered by the end of June, which will serve as grounds for recommendations, grounds to monitor trends in the budget-financed projects, projects financed by international financial organizations. A lot of interesting information will emerge through comparison. There are 24 regions and there will be many repairs everywhere. We will be able to compare trends by regions, by contractors, and by cost of repairing a kilometers of the same types of roads," Forsiuk said.
According to her, CoST has identified four road projects for analysis: Lubny-Poltava, Kyiv-Znamianka, roads in the Carpathians, and repair of public roads. Two of them are financed with funds from international financial institutions and two with funds from the state budget.
"We will do this very simply. Firstly, the disclosed data will be published in full. Then, professionals will check the data and deliver a report. This report will also be made public. Our goal is to present information in the report in plain language," she said.
"On the basis of international standards, we have developed an algorithm for disclosing information about projects. The idea is to disclose information at all stages – from the moment of adoption of decisions to the moment of signing the certificate of completion of work. Our goal is to create a single platform into which we will enter all information from start to finish," Forsiuk added.
According to her, In the case of projects financed by the IMF, the risk of corruption is highest at the design or tender stage, when participants are selected. In the case of projects financed with state budget funds, there are more opportunities to steal at the stage of performance of works.
