From US$300M to US$915M without the project being launched. Wow!

No wonder, when the Parliament, through a majority vote, only approved a US$50B limit, Sithe Global walked from the project.

This project is dead.

I read this one min ago and was about to publish here. Thank you for posting Mr Mitwah.

Mitwah should be ashame to focus his attention on a dead issue regardless if the cost is more or less than previously estimated. Thanks to APNU/AFC for their anti-development stance. 

Stay under your rock. Thanks to AFC for bringing Tranparency & Accountability and putting the interest of the populace first before party interests.

If I was supporting APNU/AFC I would never get out from under a rock. I would be still living like the Flintstones in bedrock.

Transparency & Accountability like that of the honorable Nigel Hughes? 

That pale in comparison to the  US$150B amount that Sithe Global had requested for Government to guarantee, should GPL make shortfalls.

Hughes and Hydro:
I have no doubt that the disclosure that Mr. Nigel Hughes functioned simultaneously as chairman for the Alliance For Change and the Company Secretary for Amaila Hydroelectric Project Inc. is a shock from which many have not yet recovered. His decision to resign from the party rather than the company must have bewildered his supporters more than anything else. The fact that his leader disclaims knowledge of his dual role speaks volumes. To whom did he make his alleged disclosure that he is the company secretary for Amaila Hydro Electric Project Inc. when his leader is unaware, is indeed a million dollar question. Certainly, the disclosure was not made public and only that could have possibly dissipated the impregnable conflict of interest which he eventually admitted. Alas, this public disclosure is almost four years late.

Govt mulls drafting new hydropower plan

In the wake of the virtual collapse of the Amaila Falls Hydro Power Project, government on Thursday announced that with support from its international

Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon

counterparts, it is toying with the idea of drafting a new hydropower initiative.

Mitwah, who is telling lies here? This seem like real progress people would be interesting in.

Govt mulls drafting new hydropower plan

August 30, 2013 By admin

In the wake of the virtual collapse of the Amaila Falls Hydro Power Project, government on Thursday announced that with support from its international

Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon

counterparts, it is toying with the idea of drafting a new hydropower initiative.

They should initiate another hydropower project but that at the ridiculous price of $US 951 million for a 165 megawatt plant. That is simply highway robbery

The Confidential Project Document however has revealed that for Guyana’s financial commitments, US$11.4M was spent prior to 2013 on the Amaila Falls Access Road.
It states that in 2013 some US$21.8M was committed to the road and another $0.5M to be spent each year between 2014 and 2017.
This would bring the total cost earmarked for the completion of the Access Road to US$35.2M.
The road project was originally slated to be US$15.4M, less than half the cost that it stands now.

Snake who is selling your oil?

Shameface gat dem rass dizzy.  Imagine, a dizzy katahar, what more could you ask for!

All those hidden fees and you are not ashamed? 

You shoul be ashamed to be speaking of your parents like that.

Amaila Hydro was structured as a gigantic rip-off – Gaskin

“Were it not for the insistence of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) that Government obtain parliamentary approval for two peripheral pieces of legislation relating to Amaila, no information would have been made available to the parliamentary parties.”
This was the contention of Financial Analyst, Ramon Gaskin, who in his most recent addition to the raging debate over the Amaila Falls Hydro Electric project, said that had the information not come out the project would have gone the route of the Marriott.
He said that like the Marriott, Amaila would have been “burdening consumers and taxpayers with a flawed project costing.”
Gaskin said that this would have been backed by a 20-year guarantee “that if as consumers Guyanese cannot meet the payments to the promoters, then as taxpayers they will be forced to do so through taxes.”

Financial Analyst, Ramon Gaskin

According to Gaskin, it did not escape the critics’ eyes that the returns on funds provided were set at the exorbitant and usurious rates of 19 per cent for Sithe Global, 9.5 per cent for the IDB and 8.5 per cent for China Bank. All these would have been passed to the taxpayers through Winston Brassington’s Amaila Falls Hydro Electric Project (AFHEP)
“These rates are unprecedented in international transactions and altogether constitute over US$1.2B in interest payment alone, all payable in foreign currency, against which the rate of the Guyana Dollar continues to depreciate.”
The same loan would normally have been made to the Guyana Government at a rate of interest of no more than two per cent.
All these costs would have ultimately found their way into the tariffs, according to Gaskin.
He said, “As far as the critics are concerned, other than the romantic notion of hydro, there is nothing redeeming about this particular project given the way it is conceived, planned, architectured, structured and owned.”
He said that many saw this as a gigantic rip-off in the making. The colonial mechanism of placing an agent in the GPL to take control of its revenues and its receivables is particularly offensive.
Professor Kenrick Hunte, who has also been adding his voice to the raging debate, said that on the matter of the IDB halting its due diligence study for the project, the Guyana Government should utilize some of the Norway Funds to have it completed
Dr Hunte was referring to Minister of Finance Dr. Ashni Singh’s statement that the IDB has ceased the due diligence work on the Amaila Falls project.
“I have a suggestion for the Minister, the Government, the Opposition, and the people of Guyana. Ask the Government of Norway to use some of the money allocated to fund three important studies.”
He said that it should first use some of the money to complete the Amaila due diligence study and this will provide invaluable information that “we do not now have. It would close the current knowledge gap on Amaila.”
Dr Hunte said, too, that Guyana should use some of the Norway funds to complete a study on the full repair cost of bringing the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) up to an efficient and cost effective operational level.
He said that a complete analysis on the financing a new energy supply company to replace GPL should also be done, taking into account the electricity demand requirements for the next decade.
“The reason for this analysis is to ensure that GPL can deliver a clean, reliable and cost effective supply of electricity to consumers…The patchwork approach to GPL has not worked and much time and other resources have been spent without the expected benefits being delivered."

Talk to the man baseman, my parents are not on this board.  You cannot handle me, so you cuzz mother and family, eh.  You are a yellow-belly low-life kataher.  Come after me you lil snake...come let me whip your waggly tongue.

You are an ass hole to be speaking of your parents like that. 

The impact of trust and failed communication

It seems that at every turn something more is being uncovered about the Amaila Falls hydroelectric project. We now hear that it would have cost considerably more than the US$858 million because of a variety of additional costs.
From the inception we knew that the road would have cost more than US$15.4 million and the government had to know this. No one factors into the cost of a project the exact figures. There is always room for over-runs and the Amaila Falls project would have taken the various inflationary trends into consideration.
When the government planned the project it should have had all the figures at hand. For example, when it tenders for a road programme it has a certain sum in mind, having prepared all the specifications. It examines every aspect of the project so it knows how much it has to spend. This seemed not to be the case with the Amaila Falls hydroelectric project.
For one, when the project was first announced the price was under US$600 million. The planners would have taken the various costs into consideration. When they planned the Berbice River Bridge that is what they did. Every project was constructed within a given price range that was stated before the actual construction. The Amaila Falls hydro project appeared to be the difference.
It was strange that when it was planned the government did not take all the stakeholders into consideration. When Forbes Burnham wanted to nationalize the bauxite industry he talked with the then opposition leader Dr Cheddi Jagan.  It was the same when he planned to construct the hydroelectric facility at Kumerau. Even the cost of the project was made public before the road construction began.
It could be that when the project was planned, the government with its parliamentary majority knew that it had the ability to ramrod anything through the house and get the projects to completion. There was therefore no need for dialogue and discussion. As it turned out, this proved to be the demise of the major projects in Guyana; the government no longer controlled the national assembly and therefore did not have total control over the public treasury.
The result is that the government continues to talk about confidential aspects of the programme. What could be confidential about a programme that involves public spending? This is tantamount to taking people’s money and spending it in a secretive manner —without the knowledge of the people.In civil life this is called theft or misappropriation.
To hear the people behind the Amaila Falls project still talking about confidentiality suggests something ulterior.  People would wonder about what it is that should be confidential, given that the loan arrangements have been finalized, the contractors named and the project schedule underlined. One would understand if there are many plans out there and there is to be competition for some of the tenders.
Given the various sub-plots, the project was doomed to failure for the lack of communication.  In the last days, the government spoke about the reduction in electricity charges to the consumer. But enterprising people found that in Uganda, the cost of electricity to the consumer actually went up following the construction of the hydroelectric facility.
It would be nice to sit with someone and trace the development of the Amaila Falls project. The answer for granting the impossible road contract to a person who never even constructed a footbridge would be instructional.
It would also be instructional to understand why after finalizing all the construction costs the actual project cost would keep rising.
Many people are angry. Imagine that the Inter-American Development Bank, one of the funding agencies, was actually conducting a feasibility study right up to the time when actual construction should have started? It is still to continue this study, but the government says that the Amaila Falls project is dead, so there is no need for a further study.
And while that may be the case, the government is still pointing fingers, this time accusing the main opposition party for  the halt in the feasibility study by the IDB.
Suffice it to say that the nation wanted hydroelectricity, but it wanted a review of the high cost.

Come katahar, talk to baseman, leave my mother out, I want to tangle up your low-life yella-belly snake.

Stop insulting and embarrasing your parents. You are a door knob.