On May 6, 2004 the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) announced the selection of 16 countries eligible to apply for funding under the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA). The MCC arrived at this list of countries both by applying its pre-announced quantitative selection process and through discretion on the part of its Board of Directors. This note compares the list of countries selected as eligible to apply for MCA funding with the list generated by a strict, objective application of the MCA indicators methodology without MCC Board discretion. It then briefly examines the seven cases in which the Board used its discretion to either include countries that did not meet the indicators test, or exclude countries that passed the tests. Although several of the discretionary cases appear justified, several are more questionable, particularly the exclusion of Guyana and the inclusion of Georgia.
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