The Railway and the Mineral Rights
A foreign consortium offers to build a 480-kilometre railway in exchange for twenty-five years of mineral rights. The corridor is the binding constraint on agricultural exports. The election is fourteen months away.
A designed exercise. The country, the companies and every figure here are invented, so that judgement can be practised without the exercise being read as a claim about a real state.
What everyone in the room knows
- The consortium will build 480 km of railway from the agricultural interior to the main port, at its own cost.
- In exchange it receives a twenty-five year mineral concession over the northern deposit, with an option to extend.
- The valuation of the deposit in the draft contract rests on a survey completed twelve years ago.
- Disputes would be arbitrated abroad, under a foreign governing law, with proceedings confidential.
- The railway would take an estimated six years to complete. The next general election is in fourteen months.
Take a seat
Each role holds facts the others do not. Choose one, and you will see only what that person knows until the debrief.
Head of government
You promised visible infrastructure. Your party expects it to exist before people vote.
Minister of Finance
You are responsible for what the treasury is committed to, including what nobody has written down.
Minister of Mines
You are accountable for what the country gives away, and at what price.