Financing case study - Yanco Creek Rehabilitation Project Public/Private Potential Joint Venture - preliminary evaluation: a study conducted for the Pratt Water Murrumbidgee Valley Water Efficiency Feasibility Project

This report forms part of the research undertaken within the Pratt Water Murrumbidgee Project, which is about private investment options to improve water use and to save otherwise wasted water for productive uses. Part of that project is the examination of specific investment projects that have been considered as having the greatest potential to attract private investment and financing. Such examination also fits with the importance allocated by governments to finding 'market based solutions' for water use efficiency, including private participation. Whilst there has been increasing discussion of the need to extend 'public private partnerships' to rural water in Australia most of the discussion has taken place either in a theoretical or broadbrush context. The prime objective of this report is to attempt to move out of the theoretical and into the practical by exploring the funding requirements for works in a specific area and for a specific project (Yanco Creek Rehabilitation Project), identifying some of the potentially conflicting objectives and stakeholder requirements by putting the project in its situational context, examining the potential existing funding options and requirements of various funding parties, testing private sector financiability assumptions, detailing potential impediments, presenting for further discussion and development a potential alternative multilateral funding model and providing a 'Roadmap' to progress further consideration of options. The report seeks to fill, at a preliminary level only, the gap between an economic benefit study and a financial viability and funding and bankability assessment.