Documented examples

Each record describes something a country built that the indicators do not capture. The source provides the published number; the mechanism is our interpretation.

Scores describe outcomes. These records describe how a country acted, what it needed and what happened. 742 of 742 records include a mechanism. They do not affect scores.

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SearchCountryCapabilityStatusWith a mechanism5 of 742 deliveries

Coordination

1 delivery linked to Public-private collaboration.

Guatemalasince 2003still operatingbears on Public-private collaboration

Guatecompras, the national procurement marketplace

Guatemala's Ministry of Finance reported 152,676 enabled Guatecompras users in April 2023, including 137,950 registered suppliers alongside public buyers, auditors and oversight bodies using the national procurement system.

152,676 users, enabled guatecompras users, 2023-04. 137,950 users, enabled supplier users, 2023-04. Government of Guatemala, Ministry of Public Finance, Guatecompras user report, retrieved 2026-08-31.

The move, and what it needed

Guatemala put public buyers, suppliers, auditors and oversight bodies on a shared procurement record, giving firms a common route into state demand and giving monitors a common transaction identifier. The platform turns a dispersed paper process into a searchable public-private interface.

Preconditions

A procurement rule that requires public entities to publish opportunities and awards in one system
Supplier registration and buyer roles that let firms participate while preserving audit access
A public data interface and complaint or correction process that makes transactions inspectable after award

Where else it has been used: Procurement platforms travel when participation and oversight use the same records: a portal that only publishes winning announcements cannot create the supplier competition or audit trail that Guatecompras attempts.

Limits: Enabled accounts are not the same as completed tenders, competitive prices, delivered works or lower corruption. The ministry's count is an administrative snapshot and does not show how often suppliers bid, whether data are corrected, or whether every public entity follows the system in practice.

Learning

1 delivery linked to Adult learning participation.

Guatemalasince 1972still operatingbears on Adult learning participation

Instituto Técnico de Capacitación y Productividad (INTECAP)

Guatemala's employer-levy-funded training institute INTECAP reported 490,280 participants in 26,387 vocational training events in 2025, 99.72% of its operating-plan target, through centres in all 22 departments.

490,280 participants (event enrolments), participants in vocational training events (total formación profesional), 2025. 26,387 events, vocational training events delivered, 2025. Instituto Técnico de Capacitación y Productividad (INTECAP), Resultados Finales de Estadísticas Operativas 2025 (G.E.DP-01), retrieved 2026-10-01.

The move, and what it needed

Guatemala's Congress gave a joint state-employer institute a compulsory 1% payroll levy, collected by the social security institute, and the institute turned it into a national network of training centres and short courses for workers at every occupational level.

Preconditions

A formal payroll base large enough to fund training through a levy collected alongside social security contributions
Employer representation in governance, so firms accept the levy as their own training budget
Centres in every department, which reach formal workers and leave the large informal workforce mostly outside

Where else it has been used: It follows the Latin American levy-funded training model (SENAI, SENA, INA), and like them it reaches the formal sector far better than informal workers.

Limits: This is INTECAP reporting on itself against its own operating plan. Nobody audits the count. Participants are enrolments in events, not unique people: one worker who takes three courses counts three times, so the figure cannot be divided by the adult population to give a participation rate, which is what the indicator asks for. Most of the volume is short: seminars (202,359) and the ACTA line (218,147) make up about 86% of participants, while the long technical careers (CTO, CTM, CTMS) total about 13,400. Some programmes, such as FORJA and the mid-level technical careers, enrol young people, so not every participant is an adult learner. The text layer garbles the event columns of several national rows, though the total row reads cleanly. The figure covers one year only. No series is given here, so this record cannot say whether participation is rising or falling, and it says nothing about completion, certification or labour-market outcomes.

Adaptability

2 deliveries linked to Institutional responsiveness, Disaster preparedness and recovery.

Guatemalasince 2020delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness

Bono Familia, the COVID-19 emergency cash transfer

Guatemala's Ministry of Social Development (MIDES) made the first Bono Familia payments in May 2020, two months after the pandemic emergency was declared. By December 2020 the programme had reached 2.7 million beneficiaries, 21 times the 128,036 beneficiaries of the regular Bono Social cash transfer in 2019.

2,700,000 beneficiaries, bono familia beneficiaries, 2020-12. 128,036 beneficiaries, beneficiaries of the regular conditional cash transfer (bono social) before the shock, 2019. World Bank and UNICEF, Programa Bono Familia: Innovación y Lecciones Aprendidas para la Protección Social, retrieved 2026-10-01.

The move, and what it needed

A law created a Q6 billion emergency fund and MIDES, which had no social registry, used electricity distributors' customer records to identify households, telecom operators to register and notify them, and banks' virtual accounts and ATMs to pay them. Its caseload grew 21 times in eight months.

Preconditions

Near-universal electricity metering, so a utility customer list could stand in for a social registry
A banking network willing to open virtual accounts at scale and pay out through ATMs and retail points
A congressional appropriation passed within weeks of the emergency declaration

Where else it has been used: Utility and telecom data used as a stand-in registry appeared across Latin America in 2020. The usual lesson is that the stand-in is retired after the shock and the regular programme returns to its small base; the brochure still calls for a national social registry, which suggests the stand-in was not institutionalised here.

Limits: The publishers are Guatemala's development partners (the World Bank lent to its 2020 crisis response) and this is a lessons-learned brochure, not an independent evaluation, and no Contraloría audit was consulted. Beneficiaries are registrations tied mostly to electricity meters, not verified unique people or households. Eligibility ran through electricity consumption, so households without power came in only through special cases capped at 10% (143,014 special cases). The 21-times figure compares a three-payment emergency transfer with a conditional programme of a different design, so it measures scale-up, not like-for-like coverage. The poverty effect is a World Bank simulation. The responsiveness did not last. The same document says cash transfer programmes shrank between 2012 and 2021, except in 2020. Bono Social reached only 152,702 households in 2018 at 0.05% of GDP, and the brochure lists open challenges in carrying the payment model into regular programmes. One episode of fast emergency scale-up does not show that rules and programmes in general change quickly.

Guatemalasince 2009delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery

Contingent disaster credit with a Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Option

On 21 April 2020, five days after its second World Bank disaster-risk loan with a Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Option became effective, Guatemala's government decided to withdraw the entire US$200 million to meet the fiscal shock of COVID-19, and the loan was fully disbursed. A first such credit of US$85 million, approved in 2009, had been drawn in 2010 after the Pacaya eruption and Tropical Storm Agatha.

200 US$ million, contingent credit withdrawn in full (cat ddo ii), 2020-04-21. 5 days, days from loan effectiveness to the decision to withdraw the full loan, 2020-04-21. World Bank Independent Evaluation Group, ICR Review ICRR0024053, Guatemala DRM DPL with CAT DDO II (P159710), retrieved 2026-10-02.

The move, and what it needed

The finance ministry pre-negotiated a contingent credit line tied to a declared state of calamity, so that a declaration released money within days instead of waiting for a new loan through Congress, and layered parametric insurance and a contingent IDB line on top under a 2018 disaster risk financing strategy.

Preconditions

A legal state-of-calamity declaration that can serve as the drawdown trigger
Congressional approval of the credit before the shock, which is where Guatemala lost a year
A finance ministry with a disaster risk financing strategy and budget tags to track the spending

Where else it has been used: CAT DDOs are used across Latin America (Colombia, Peru, Costa Rica, Guatemala); Guatemala's sequence shows the instrument lapsing between uses unless it is renewed before the next disaster.

Limits: Both numbers are on page 2 of the 18-page IEG review PDF ('The loan was fully disbursed'; 'On 21 April 2020 (just five days after the project became effective), the Government decided to withdraw the entire loan'). The US$85 million first credit, its approval on 14 April 2009 (the started year) and its 2010 drawdown are from the World Bank's 2019 Program Document for the same operation (documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/977151559008837975/pdf/Guatemala-Second-Disaster-Risk-Management-Development-Policy-Loan.pdf, PDF pages 25 and 48), not from the IEG review. The money is a World Bank loan: the Guatemalan delivery is arranging it, legislating it and drawing it, and the same documents show how fragile that was. There was no contingent instrument in place for the June 2018 Fuego eruption, when 'in the absence of any other financial instrument' Congress fast-tracked an unrelated budget-support loan (Program Document page 11); total resources available for disasters were under 0.1 percent of GDP in 2017 (page 25); the second credit took a year to become effective because of conflict between the executive and Congress; and the DRM law it supported was not adopted (IEG review page 17). The withdrawal shows liquidity arrived fast, not that it was spent well; the review notes the bank could no longer supervise once the line was drawn.

Building

1 delivery linked to Large project delivery.

Guatemalasince 1977delivered and closedbears on Large project delivery

Chixoy hydroelectric project, and its cost and time overrun

Guatemala's state electricity institute INDE built the 300 MW Chixoy hydroelectric project under contracts signed in 1977 and 1978; after the power-tunnel lining collapsed in late 1983 it entered commercial operation in November 1985, 41 months later than originally planned, at a final cost of US$823.1 million excluding finance charges against an appraisal estimate of US$372.7 million, an increase of 120 percent.

823.1 million US dollars, final project cost excluding finance charges, as estimated by inde, 1991-12. 372.7 million US dollars, appraisal cost estimate excluding finance charges, 1977. World Bank, Project Completion Report, Guatemala Chixoy Hydroelectric Power Project (Loan 1605-GU), Report No. 10258-GU, 31 December 1991, retrieved 2026-10-02.

The move, and what it needed

The state utility chose a single-stage scheme with a 26 km power tunnel through poorly understood geology, contracted the works on winning bids before the seismic redesign that followed the 1976 earthquake was settled, and financed the doubling of cost with supplementary loans and local funds.

Preconditions

A state utility with a monopoly on generation and access to multilateral loans
Cost estimates built from bid prices with contingencies sized for ordinary geology
Lenders willing to add supplementary financing rather than stop a half-built dam

Limits: The final cost is INDE's own figure as reported in the World Bank's completion report, which says INDE's data 'reflect shortcomings' and could not reconcile cost increases with physical quantities (para. 4.26, PDF page 32). Both costs and the 120 percent increase are in the table under para. 4.04 (PDF page 25), in para. 4.24 (PDF pages 31 to 32) and in Table 3 (PDF page 71); the 41-month delay against the original plan is in para. 4.04 (PDF page 24) and the summary's 'about 3.5 years' on PDF page 8; para. 3.18 (PDF page 19) records that the bids implied commercial operation by October 1981 while the appraisal team judged it unlikely before June 1982; the November 1985 start of operation is in para. 2.08 (PDF page 13). The text is OCR of a scanned 1991 document. The appraisal estimate is dated to the March 1977 appraisal; its exact price basis is not stated, and price increases account for US$141.1 million of the overrun by INDE's breakdown. The power tunnel's lining remained structurally unreliable after repair, so 'concluded' means built and operating, not sound. The project was co-financed by the World Bank, the IDB and others, though INDE owned and built it. The PCR records that the resettlement programme was judged flawed in conception; the 1980 to 1982 killings of Río Negro residents displaced by the reservoir, documented elsewhere, are outside what this cost figure measures and are the larger failure of this project. This is a 1977 to 1985 build and says little about Guatemala's delivery capacity now.