Earlier this month, newspapers in Guyana reported that Sithe Global had pulled out of the Amaila Falls hydropower dam. Sithe Global’s President Brian Kubeck told the Stabroek News that the project was too big to continue without the approval of all three parties in Guyana’s Parliament.
The 165 MW Amaila Falls dam is one of the few projects under Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy. US$80 million was supposed to come from Norway’s Guyana REDD-Plus Investment Fund (GRIF). The most recent Summary Status of GRIF Projects dated 20 August 2013 makes no mention of the Amaila Falls dam project. The project is however, still listed on the GRIF website.
Sithe Global cannot continue its development efforts without the same level of commitment from our partners in Guyana. We can only proceed further if there is uniform consensus in Parliament that you support this project.
Without such consensus, Sithe Global will be forced to withdraw. This is simply an acknowledgement that, after US$ 16 million and six years of intense effort by Sithe Global to progress the project, the country is not prepared to proceed.
The bill for the dam has steadily increased. In the early 2000s, the estimated cost was US$325 million. The most recent estimate is US$915 million.
In July 2013, Sithe Global produced a public presentation about the project, just before announcing that it would not be going ahead with the dam.
Earlier this week, the Minister of Finance, Dr Ashni Singh, announced that the Inter American Development Bank (IDB) has stopped its due diligence that it was carrying out on the project.
Dr Singh blamed the opposition party A Partnership For National Unity (APNU) for not approving the project.
minister of finance ashni singh can simply produce documents of all these deals he has signed for public perusal.
You hit it on the nail. Government needs to be transparent and accountable. That’s what a Minister of Finance should specialize in. Two many cooks in the kitchen.