Sura Asset Management, a unit of Colombian financial conglomerate Grupo Sura, and Peru’s Credicorp Capital signed an agreement Tuesday to create a 1.3-trillion-peso ($400-million) investment vehicle that will provide financing for the construction this year of up to five fourth-generation highways in Colombia.

The contributions to the “4G Private Capital Fund” will come from insurance companies, pension funds, the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation and Financiera de Desarrollo Nacional, or FDN, a Colombian financial development institution, Sura and Credicorp representatives said at a press conference Tuesday in Bogota.

“Colombia needs a successful 4G program under a long-term perspective to boost its productivity and become a country that can export more and more and make the transition from an economy with more oil dependence to an economy more dependent on industry, agriculture and services,” Finance Minister Mauricio Cardenas said.

He hailed the alliance of Sura Asset Management and Credicorp, saying those two “prestigious entities” were “providing a great contribution to the country and job creation.”

Cardenas also said that over the next several weeks the Colombian government would provide FDN with the first trillion pesos (some $296 million) from the sale of its controlling stake in power producer Isagen, which Canadian fund Brookfield Asset Management purchased last week.

Those funds will enable FDN to contribute around 200 billion pesos (some $59.2 million) to each approved 4G project, he said.

The government sold its 57.6 percent stake in Isagen for 6.49 trillion pesos (some $2 billion), money the Colombian government said would be invested to improve Colombia’s deficient highway infrastructure.

Each participant in the 4G Private Capital Fund, whose initial financing focus will be the 27 highway projects already awarded under a public-private partnership model, will contribute 150 billion pesos (some $48 million).

Latin American Herald Tribune |