Alliances for Development in Guatemala

Creating alliances for the implementation of the SDGs is a key factor for the process, this has been recognized in SDG 17 and in the eighth component of Guatemala’s National Strategy for Implementation of the National Development Priorities. Therefore, in 2018, an agreement was signed between the Secretariat of Planning and Programming (Segeplan) and the General Comptroller’s Office. Segeplan has the legal mandate to guide and advise all public institutions in the formulation of their annual and multiannual plans. These are the plans that are used for the formulation of the national budget. Therefore, Segeplan has the capacity to direct national institutions to prioritize certain topics according to national plans, international commitments and public policy in general. This is one of the reasons why Segeplan has been designated as the conductor of the implementation of national development priorities and the SDGS. However, Segeplan is not an auditing institution, therefore, it lacks the capacity to reinforce its guidelines to ensure a correct execution of the plans. In this context, during 2018 Segeplan established and alliance with the General Comptroller’s Office, which has the legal mandate to control, audit and examine the work of public institutions. The cooperation agreement was made official in May 2018, through a signed document by the Secretary and the General Comptroller. This agreement seeks to establish an strategic alliance to monitor the implementation of the SDGs, to promote transparency and accountability amongst public institutions responsible of executing actions toward these goals. Both institutions commit to generate and share information that will facilitate the monitoring, as well as promoting sectorial auditing, including the adherence of public institutions to guidelines and timelines established as well as their financial execution related to the SDGs. Traditionally, the CGC has worked mainly in financial and performance post-audits, this agreement seeks to enable their role to be also as a monitoring entity during the implementation process.

The second alliance established in 2018 was also a cooperation agreement, between Segeplan and the organization CentraRSE. CentraRSE is a national organization that seeks to promote global citizenship and corporate social responsibility principles with private companies. Currently, over a 100 companies are associated to CentraRSE, and the organization has sought to integrate the SDGs in their strategic planning for the upcoming years. Therefore, in 2017, Segeplan was invited to present advances in the appropriation process of the SDGs in Centrarse’s annual forum, which led to an ongoing relationship between both. In 2018, this relationship was strengthened through the cooperation agreement signed in October by the Secretary and the President of Centrarse. The objective of the agreement is to share information and data to monitor the implementation of the SDGs, promote the national development priorities in different spaces and presentations that each entity takes part of, strengthen the knowledge and capacities of the staff.