ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some regional-level tri-sector partnership arrangements, each involving the BP Exploration Company (BPXC) in the Casanare department of Colombia. Although ten years of oil production has improved the average social and economic status of the department as a whole, a number of barriers to the development of the region remain. In 1999 BPXC engaged with the Business Partners for Development programme and began to promote a tri-sector partnership model centred on long-term regional, non-oil-dependent economic development. Concurrent with this intervention, a parallel regional partnership was under way—the School for Leadership and Governance—providing government institutions, among others, skills relevant to financial management. In essence, the partnerships have put in place two of the principal building blocks of any process of institutional reform: namely, ownership and training. The strategic intervention of the Casanare governor to propose transforming Grupo Gestor into a formal development corporation with a long-term planning and consensus-building mandate was decisive.
