Government continues to maintain the Amaila Falls Access Road while it mulls options for recovering the maintenance costs incurred yearly.
“We have to maintain the road because we paid for it and don’t want it to deteriorate,” Minister of Public Infrastructure (MPI) David Patterson told Stabroek News last week.
Further, he explained “At the moment we are trying to figure out cost recovery for it, what options are available. We are also going through several options, including having people pay to lease it and things like that, to go to or access their concession but we haven’t arrived at any decision on any of them as yet.”
Patterson’s predecessor Robeson Benn had said, shortly before leaving office, that the cost to maintain the road would be some $200M annually while pointing out that about US$28.9M was spent to build the road.
Asked about current costs, Patterson said he did not have figures at his disposal at the time of the interview, but that he would make them known as the works are overseen by the MPI’s Special Projects Unit.
Benn had defended the construction of the road after assertions were made that it was leading to nowhere. “The Amaila road project it is not a road to nowhere. It is a road to everywhere in terms of our economic development,” he had said.
The former Minister of Public Works had stated that his then government, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), was working, both at the Ministry of Finance and Office of the President level, to see the hydro project a reality and remained optimistic that soon an investor would be had and the project would kick off.
Sithe Global pulled out in August of 2013 after failing to gain unanimous parliamentary approval of the Amaila Falls Hydropower Project (AFHP). Observers said that broad approval was required as the government was in the minority in the legislature.
But in December of 2015, seven months after the APNU+AFC took office it announced that Norway would fund a review to determine the viability of the project.
The Ministry of the Presidency had in February announced that Norwegian company, Norconsult was selected by Guyana, to review the financial model of the AFHP, the results of which would determine whether the controversial project would go ahead.
However, Minister of Natural Resources Raphael Trotman last week said that the review of the financial model is yet to begin but that it will be completed by the end of the year.
The Ministry of the Presidency had noted that the decision follows up on one taken by Guyana and Norway in Paris, France, in December 2015 to conduct a review of the project’s current financial model, which the government believes could shackle many generations of Guyanese to debt.
Both sides are awaiting the study on the contentious AFHP to make a definitive decision on how to proceed. The AFHP was the flagship project of the five-year forests protection partnership –which ended last year – between Guyana and Norway in which Guyana could earn up to US$250 million in performance-based payments based on an independent verification of Guyana’s deforestation and forest degradation rates and progress on REDD+ enabling activities. REDD+ is a global initiative that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
Norway had transferred US$80 million to the Inter-American Development Bank for the project but the David Granger administration has said that as currently configured, “it would not only be irresponsible, but a downright criminal act of deception,” if government proceeded with Amaila.
Norway had previously urged the APNU+AFC administration to consider the merits of the AFHP and indicated that Guyana stands to lose the US$80 million earmarked for the project if it fails to come up with a plan for “transformational” renewable energy sources that can be realized in the next few years. It had strongly supported the project under the previous PPP/C administration.
Subsequently, both sides agreed to a final, independent review of the project.
