REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: SELECTION OF PUBLIC PROJECTS

Local (regional) public projects evaluation and selection is quite important but not well developed topic in economic development (ED). The concept of ED itself is still transforming and amended. Public projects which target intangible outcomes, such as social and cultural development initiatives, are tough to evaluate and find out their priority among each other. This paper offers one universal method to evaluate and prioritize public projects with both tangible and intangible results. Suggested model is based on widely spread among different disciplines double- or weighted-scoring methodology. It works through formulating local (regional) ED priorities, then assigning them relative importance scores and eventually evaluating projects towards compliance to the ED priorities. This method was test-run both at national (Kuwait) level, and at a regional level (South-West Nova, Canada). It proved to be a simple, but reliable tool of prioritizing of public projects