Colombia to boost digital transformation of justice with IDB support

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has approved a credit line of up to $500 million to support the digital transformation of Colombia’s justice system, promoting an integrated approach and a medium- and long-term vision to improve judicial service delivery.

Financing will be in the form of a conditional credit line for investment projects. The first loan of $100 million will help boost the justice system’s transparency, effectiveness and efficiency to tackle judiciary processes and better meet the judicial needs of citizens.

The loan will fund actions aimed at strengthening the capacity of institutions to adopt the new technologies as a transformation tool; bringing new technologies and digital services to the entire justice system; and transforming the paper culture to a digital culture geared toward better serving citizens.

The operation’s main beneficiaries will be citizens and businesses, who will see improvement in response times for the justice system to meet their judicial needs and savings from the digitalization of services and access to information on the status of their judicial processes. This digital transformation of the justice system is aligned with one of the pillars of the IDB Group’s Vision 2025 strategy.

In 2017, only 10 percent of the population reported at least one judicial need, and within that universe, the issue was not resolved in 60 percent of cases. In addition, 31 percent of the population says that the main barrier to access to justice is the time and quantity of proceedings required of them.

The IDB loan associated with the credit line is for a 23-year term, with a 6.5-year grace period and an interest rate based on LIBOR.