August 25, 2013 | By KNews | Filed Under News 

The People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) is willing to kill the Amaila Falls Hydro Electric Project rather than make full disclosures on the related financial arrangements. This is firm view of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU)’s Joseph Harmon. “A real look into the financial arrangements inked under the guise of transformational projects would reveal clearly where all the thieving is going on. They don’t want to give us all of the arrangements,” said Harmon, who has also questioned the pronouncements that the project is dead. He said that APNU is yet to see any official documentation of a wrap up to the company Amaila Falls Hydro Inc. Harmon, an Attorney-at-Law, stressed that “there is a process involved in closing a company and not because Sithe Global has withdrawn, means the project or company is dead.” He reminded that government held a stake in Amaila Falls Hydro Inc, the company that was created to build the US$858M Hydro Electric Plant. During the past week, Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon stated that the project is dead, even as President Donald Ramotar insists that he is looking for other investors. With regard to government refusing to turn over the financial arrangements made for the project, Harmon told Kaieteur News this was a specific request made by APNU. “This is crux of the matter, but the government has blatantly refused. While the government did make available some of the information regarding the project that was previously withheld under the guise of confidentiality, this remains the case with the financial arrangements. They said that is confidential,” said Harmon, who maintains that all APNU received was “bits and pieces” of information. “What we want to know is who is being paid what.” He cited as an example the US$35M being paid in lenders’ fees and advisory services, “we don’t know who this is being paid to. According to information provided by Sithe Global, the project cost at the time of their pull out stood at US$858M. Of that money, Guyana was said to be putting in US$100M, Sithe Global had committed US$158M while Amaila Falls Hydro Inc. secured a loan from China for US$500M. Another US$100M was being sought from the Inter-American Development Bank. The servicing of this debt comes at a cost of US$97.1M. This is in addition to the US$35M being paid in lenders’ fees and advisory services, paid to an undisclosed entity. Financing of the money being borrowed also comes with ‘debt political risk insurance’ to the tune of US$187.7M. Among the many criticisms surrounding the project was its financial structure, including a 19 per cent rate of return for Sithe Global and another 8.5 per cent rate of return for the Chinese loan. While government has consistently maintained that it did not incur any debt with the manner in which the project was being pursued, it had approached Parliament with a request to raise the debt ceiling on which it could guarantee repayments for loans made to public corporations. Government initially asked for the debt ceiling to be raised to $150B, which it said would only be triggered should the Guyana Power and Light Inc. fail to make its payments to Amaila. Those payments were in the vicinity of US$120M annually. The Government subsequently amended its request to raise the debt ceiling to a lower figure of $130B and said that this was a requirement of Sithe Global. The parliament, with the support of the opposition party, Alliance for Change (AFC), eventually approved an increase to $50B.