With the necessary instruments for enforcing accountability elaborated in Chapter 10, we see two main alternatives for developing and reaching accountable decisions on whether or not to go ahead with a mega infrastructure project. The first alternative is based on the assumption that a project, if built, would be regulated by a concession, that is this alternative is based on the build-operate-transfer (BOT) approach, or a similar set-up. In the second alternative, a possible project, if built, would be constructed and operated by a state-owned enterprise (SOE). We assume in both alternatives that at least one third of the required capital will not be secured with government guarantees. We furthermore assume that the same taxation regime would apply to both alternatives.

The two main alternatives are set out in Tables XI.i and XI.ii, and should be compared to the conventional approach as summarised in Table VIII.i in Chapter 8. The first part of the process is similar for the two alternatives but differs towards the end, once all the public interest issues have been settled through the identification of performance criteria and regulatory provisions, and once it has been decided whether project implementation should be publicly or privately led. The steps involved in the development process would not necessarily follow each other in a simple consecutive order. Several of the steps would, most likely, be carried out simultaneously and with possible interactions and iterations.