Large Scale Infrastructure, Small Scale Disclosure: Fertile Ground for Corruption

Abstract

Large sums of money borrowed for large infrastructure projects is a key contributor to Sri Lanka’s Mountain of foreign debt, which the country is struggling to pay back. Lack of transparency, coupled with poor governance frameworks within which decisions are made about such projects, makes them highly vulnerable to corruption. To reduce such vulnerabilities, it is vital to enhance transparency of the decision-making process. This is why section 9(1)a of the Right to Information Act No. 12 of 2016 is of particular importance in relation to infrastructure projects. Section 9(1)a, mandates the Minister responsible for implementing a project to proactively disclose – without waiting for a citizen to file a request – information relating to it, three months before commencement. Section 9(1)a is applicable to foreign-funded projects costing USD.100,000 or more and locally-funded projects costing Rs. 500,000 or more. The guidelines issued by the RTI Commission under Section 9(1)b of the RTI Act requires the information on large projects to be made available in Sinhala and Tamil, and for such information to be published in a digital electronic format on the ministry website. The list of information required to be disclosed is comprehensive. The list includes information such as project objectives, rationale, budget, whether a project has obtained necessary clearances (such as environmental clearances), information about the contractor, contracts signed, and whether it is a solicited or an unsolicited project. Verité Research’s assessment of government compliance with proactive disclosure requirements of section 9 is published in a trilingual dashboard named ‘Infrastructure Watch’, housed under publicfinance.lk platform. The dashboard tracked proactive disclosure of information online for 60 large-scale infrastructure projects in 2022 and 2023. The combined value of projects assessed in 2022 was slightly over LKR 1 trillion and in 2023 over LKR 2 trillion.