Anatomy of the Amaila Falls Hydro Project

Part 1

Introduction
Last week’s column completed the discussion of Phase 2 of the management of Guyana’s public investment programme (that is, project selection and sequencing). Before proceeding with Phases 3 and 4, however, as promised, I shall first examine the Amaila Falls Hydro Project (AFHP) in the context of the several considerations that were raised in the discussion of Phase 2. It is my belief that this project best illustrates those concerns, which arise from translating a country’s public investment strategy into concrete projects.

In addition to this, several readers have urged me to undertake this task after it was reported that businesspersons (with their presumed knowledge of how public projects should be selected) had in responding to a