Making High Quality Infrastructure Investment Decisions: a guide for managing and reviewing economic appraisals in the Pacific

The Challenge

Pacific Island Countries face mounting pressure to deliver infrastructure projects amid climate, economic, and geopolitical shifts—yet many lack the tools to develop business cases that meet donor expectations. Without a clear understanding of the purpose, process, and outcomes of economic analysis, projects risk misalignment, delays, or missed funding. Strengthening local capacity to apply best practice business case development is essential to unlocking sustainable investment.

The Action

To assist PRIF to effectively address these challenges, Polis Partners was engaged to develop a comprehensive economic analysis guide along with a suite of supporting tools and training for local practitioners.

• Economic analysis guide - Polis Partners produced a guide focusing specifically on the role of economic analysis within the infrastructure project life cycle. Our development process commenced with a series of technical discussions with PRIF donors including the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and International Monetary Fund to understand their technical expectations of economic analysis (namely cost-benefit analysis) in supporting and justifying their project funding decisions.
• Toolkit and training - Supporting activities continue to ensure that the knowledge in the guide is transferred and can be effectively used in the Pacific. Polis Partners developed a toolkit containing the checklists, evaluation tools, practitioner notes, case study reviews and introductory presentation materials needed to conduct or manage economic analysis for infrastructure projects.

We also conducted a series of well-received training sessions for Pacific Island industry practitioners and government officials. These sessions provided a forum to not only discuss the application of the guide, but to troubleshoot how it may apply to overcome the in-country or project-specific challenges being faced.

The Results

The resulting guide is highly tailored to the region and captures the rigor and technical elements donors require alongside the practical considerations sought by local practitioners, managers and reviewers.

Following the release of the paper to relevant member states, Polis and PRIF have undertaken a series of market engagements and information workshops on the guide, best practice project development as well as working with stakeholders on next steps on their infrastructure investment and delivery journey.