EVALUATION OF MINIMUM REVENUE GUARANTEE(MRG) IN BOT PROJECT FINANCE WITH OPTION PRICING THEORY

The limited public funds available for infrastructure projects have led governments to consider private entities' participation in long-term contracts for finance, construction, and operation of these projects to share risks and rewards between the public and the private. Because these projects have complicated risk evolutions, diverse contractual forms for each project member to hedge risks involved in a project are necessary. In light of this, Build-Operate-Transfer(BOT) model is considered as effective to accomplish Public Private Partnerships(PPPs) with a characteristic of an ownership-reversion. In BOT projects, the government has used such an incentive system as minimum revenue guarantee(MRG) agreement to attract the private's participation. Although this agreement turns out critical in success of BOT project, there still exist problematic issues in a financial feasibility analysis since the traditional capital budgeting theory, Net Present Value(NPV) analysis, has failed to evaluate the contingent characteristic of MRG agreement. The purpose of this research is to develop real option model based on option pricing theory so as to provide a theoretical framework in valuing MRG agreement in BOT projects. To understand the applicability of the model, the model is applied to the example of the BOT toll road project and the results are compared with that by NPV analysis. Finally, we found that the impact of the MRG agreement is significant on the project value. Hence, the real option model can help the government establish better BOT policies and the developer make appropriate bidding strategies.