Metro projects in developing countries are being increasingly developed as public/private ventures, which may help transcend the deterministic approach to project evaluation prevalent in the public sector. Here, tension may develop between the focus of the private partner on costs and revenues of a given option being pursued, and the need of the public partner to ensure against pursuing a "wrong" technology by studying options that will never be implemented. This paper proposes that the planning process be staged, first for the public partner to decide whether to commit funds for a high-cost study of one preferred option, then for all partners to decide whether to invest in its implementation, and on what terms. Economic cost-benefit analysis, re-oriented to serve as an exploratory tool, should be used only at the first stage. Financial analysis, the main decision aid at the second stage, requires not only higher-level costing but also traffic models oriented towards early years of operation, to permit better risk identification and allocation. (A) The French title of the paper is: "Étapes d'évaluation économique et financière des métros dans les pays en voie de développement".
Abstract