The Inter American Development Bank (IDB) is supporting the development of a community participation project to increase the provision of gas supplies in greater Buenos Aires. FOMIN, the Bank’s Multilateral Investment Fund, will provide a $3 million loan and a $690,000 technical assistance grant to equip low-income communities to organize themselves to make a collective demand for gas services, build additions to the external network and install home service connections to the network themselves.

The project reproduces a successful community participation initiative called Fideicomiso Redes Solidarias (FRS), which expanded the gas service network to 4,000 families in five Buenos Aires neighbourhoods. After three years in operation, 60 per cent of the families in the FRS project area had natural gas service in their homes, and the estimated saving resulting from fuel substitution was $210 per year per family, or around 5 per cent of their annual income.