Sugar projects are one of the biggest projects in the Ethiopia history taking more than 4 billion dollars, which is equal with the Ethiopian renascence dam. However, after taking this much capital and 8 years of construction the projects are still lagging far behind the targeted goal of solving the sugar shortage of the country and becoming a source of foreign currency earning. Taking these problems of sugar projects in mind, the goal of this research was to investigate the initial phases of

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... projects which is how the projects were identified and selected and if they followed the appropriated phases before the implementation were began. The research targeted staffs of the sugar corporation and the projects manager who are directly related with the projects overall activity. The research is done from the data collected from 30 management level staffs of Sugar Corporation and finds out that the problems of the projects begin from the blind move of the corporation towards project implementation without effective preparation and appraisal. This lack of preparation then accompanied by largeness and over ambitiousness of the projects time and performance targets took the whole project in to bust. When selecting the projects they lacked minds to predict the potential risks going to happen. In addition, the feasibility study of the projects was for formality only, which evolved vicious circle of problems. Therefore, for Sugar Corporation and other companies this should be the best course for their future project responsibilities, they should note that skipping the project identification, selection processes to save time is not really saving time rather it is creating a gap for potential project implementation delays, and cost overran.