With a view to heeding the warning that President Bharrat Jagdeo threw their way, Synergy Holdings Inc is making a greater effort for financial closure of its US$371M plan for the 100-megawatt Amaila Falls Hydro Project.

Speaking to this newspaper, Synergy Holdings Inc’s President Makeshwar ‘Fip’ Motilall said that his company has been engaged in a number of meetings with potential investors and some middle-ground has been reached, though some of the talks are still ongoing and should conclude this week.

He said that the position reached thus far should make “everybody happy.” he said that he has taken notice of what the President said some days ago that financial closure should come soon or the company may lose the franchise to build and operate the hydro facility.

Jagdeo at the press conference declared that Guyana would build the hydro project “no matter what.” The project’s completion date has shifted from 2010 to 2011.

Back in November, President Jagdeo expressed the concern that the sub prime financial crisis in the United States would mean higher international borrowing rates and the re-pricing of risk and that this could negatively impact on financing for Guyana’s hydropower project this year.

Construction of the 100 megawatt hydropower facility at Amaila Falls was expected to begin in the first quarter of this year and is slated to cost US$371M, up from US$300M in May last year.

The increase in prices of building materials like steel and cement is also a factor in the greater cost for the project.

Motilall had told Stabroek News in October that some multinational lending institutions had expressed an interest in financing the hydropower facility at Amaila Falls, Kuribrong River. Some 70 to 75 per cent of the financing is expected to come from multinational lending institutions like the European Investment Bank (EIB), the World Bank and the Inter-American Deve-lopment Bank (IDB). Motilall said that the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has also shown an interest.

The development of the hydropower plant would be undertaken as a 35-year build, own, operate and transfer (BOOT) arrangement under an open-book, public-private-partnership approach.