The National Sustainable Development Commission has delegated national capital planning and monitoring in the Cook Islands to the multi-stakeholder Infrastructure Committee which includes key public agencies and private sector representatives. The Secretariat is hosted by the Cook Islands Investment Corporation. This committee brings together the knowledge of implementors, central government planners and industry best practice in order to improve outcomes outlined in the national plans. This committee report to the National Sustainable Development Plan.
In 2007 the Government of Cook Islands adopted an Infrastructure Master Plan. The plan is a comprehensive study (6 volumes, 1,000 pages) that provides a detailed road map for infrastructure development with a planning horizon of 20 years, outlining capital works projects for transport, roads, water supply, sanitation, solid waste management, energy and telecommunications.
In 2011, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Planning (renamed Infrastructure Cook Islands in 2013), undertook an internal review of the plan. The review concluded that the initial preparation of the IMP in 2006-2007, omitted medium term plans to guide implementing agencies. In 2012, the Government requested technical assistance to develop a medium term roadmap for infrastructure investments to enable alignment to capital plan and budgeting processes.
In 2012 the Cook Islands developed the first medium term (3 year projection) capital budget, called the capital plan. This now forms part of the annual budget process and forms a critical linkage between longer terms plans and annual resource allocation.
In March 2014, work started on a 5 to 10 year plan called Cook Islands National Infrastructure Investment Plan (NIIP) which seeks to facilitate the 3 year capital planning process and revise the longer term capital master plan. This process involves participative prioritisation, developing financing strategy and consideration for creating the capacity to operate and maintain new assets.
