Assessing the Impact of SAI Peru’s Concurrent Control Model: Greater Savings and Improved Efficiency

Author: Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic of Peru

Since 2017, the implementation of a new way of doing government audit, one that applies a concurrent control model, has been central to the reform and modernization process that the Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic of Peru has been continuously undergoing, as it sought to prevent losses and mismanagement from happening, rather than identifying them once they happened. In order to ascertain the impact that concurrent control has had, the SAI of Peru conducted an impact assessment applied to the implementation of concurrent control in public investments in Peru from 2018 to August 2023, and the results were presented in June of 2024 through the Research Paper Measuring the impact of concurrent control on public investment (2018-2023)(1).

The assessment proved that concurrent control had a remarkable savings impact on public investments projects. For example, when comparing average updated cost of the investments that were subject to concurrent control versus that of the investments that were not subject to any control service, the data shows that where concurrent control was applied costs showed a negative growth of -5.5% in annual average, while they grew by 6.0% for the investments with not subject to any control, thus demonstrating that concurrent control, in addition to ensuring that public investments are made effectively, means  savings and the correct use of public funds.

Concurrent control has contributed to a reduction of 2 million soles (half a million US dollars) on average in the cost of investments, and in particular, for in the “investment project” modality, the impact evaluation shows that concurrent control helped these projects to reduce their total cost by an average of 3.5 million soles (0.9 million US dollars), compared to those projects that did not have any governmental control services. In terms of efficiency, investments subject to concurrent control also advanced faster, contributing to an average increase of 29.2 percentage points in the financial progress of investments, which translates into greater efficiency in terms of shorter execution time of these investments. 

This evaluation of the impact of concurrent control reveals that this type of control works and is therefore one of the main export products of the Office of the Comptroller General of Peru worldwide. 

You can access the Research Paper here: https://t.ly/inXfX 

(1) Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic (2024). Measuring the impact of concurrent control in public investment (2018-2023) Research paper. Lima, Peru. https://t.ly/inXfX