World Bank guarantees seek out new projects

Private sector energy projects across Africa are likely to provide a focus in the next phase of the World Bank's much-vaunted guarantee programme. The guarantees have, in recent months, seemed to have run out of steam with few projects emerging for cofinancing from the facility. Senior World Bank officials accept there are problems mobilising facilities for complex project financings, but they told FTAE that more projects in North Africa were expected to follow the most recent guarantee - extended last year for Morocco's first independent power project (IPP), the Jorf Lasfar scheme operated by ABB Energy Ventures and CMS Generation - and, south of the Sahara, Enron's Pande gas field development in Mozambique is a candidate.