Investigating the sustainability of public funds in contexts of high labor informality requires navigating data dispersion and institutional opacity. Under this methodological challenge, the project “Working Blindly: The Informality Emptying Bolivian Pensions” emerged as the winner of the Regional AI and Data Training Program by Media Party and the World Bank.
Developed by the Bolivia team from El País and led by Andrés Escobar, the investigation utilized the World Bank’s Data 360 platform to analyze the country’s largest financial asset. The work unfolds across a series of four articles structured around two core pillars: informality and fund management, even encompassing the tracking of its flight to tax havens.
Main Findings
The investigation dismantled the official narrative of pension solidity by exposing three critical realities of the Bolivian system:
- The Mirage of Coverage: Although the Gestora Pública reports a cumulative roster exceeding 2.8 million registered insured individuals, the microdata audit revealed that only 833,182 people actively contribute (barely 14% of the Economically Active Population). As the following interactive visualization of the 2023–2026 series shows, the registry grows steadily while the actual contributor base stagnates, coupled with a statistical blackout by the APS over the last two years:
- The Ceiling of Informality: By cross-referencing local records with the World Bank’s World Development Indicators through the Data360 platform, the team managed to identify the structural root of the problem. Bolivia leads labor precariety in the region with 62,7% of vulnerable employment, widening an unsustainable historical gap compared to countries like Chile, Argentina, or Uruguay:
- Concentration, Offshore Dividends, and Default: This fund’s allocation policy—managing USD 29,823 million (56% of GDP)—exposed severe inefficiencies. 93.06% of the capital is concentrated solely within the State and private banking, leaving the local productive sector with less than 4%. In 2025, this caused a net real loss of -15.9% in pension savings due to a 20.4% inflation rate against a nominal yield of just 4.5%:
While workers’ savings were losing value, local private banks reported record profits and diverted USD 88 million in dividends abroad, mainly to low-tax jurisdictions such as Panama, the Netherlands, and Bermuda. Added to this cross-border flow, the fund holds USD 1,252 million trapped in default instruments (category ‘D’) from Banco Fassil, all while operating under a public manager (Gestora Pública) that has been functioning for 15 years without constituting its legally required board of directors:
Methodology and editorial recognition
The El País team processed the data by cross-referencing records from the Gestora Pública and the APS with the World Bank’s Data 360 platform to anchor the investigation in verifiable regional evidence, tracking financial flows on the Stock Exchange and creating interactive visualizations in Flourish and Datawrapper.
After evaluating five core pillars —impact, narrative quality, technical use of data, journalistic focus, and visual sophistication—, the editorial committee awarded the program’s first prize and an additional amount of USD 1,000 to the team led by Andrés Escobar, highlighting their technical soundness in opening a financial black box and transforming complex macroeconomic variables into a transparent coverage of high public interest.
Community note: The methodology and workflow of this case study will be presented on the main stage of Media Party Buenos Aires in October 2026.
Explore the full investigation here: “Working Blindly: The Informality Emptying Bolivian Pensions” (Available in Spanish only)
