China Eximbank provides RMB 115.9 million government concessional loan (GCL) for Sierra Leone CDMA Network Project

On December 21, 2006, China Eximbank and Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Finance preferential loan framework agreement with the Government of Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Finance. It specified that China Eximbank would provide a preferential loan for this project and its value would not exceed RMB 133 million. Then, on April 10, 2007, the China Eximbank and the Government of Sierra Leone signed an RMB 115,984,112 government concessional loan (GCL) loan agreement for the Sierra Leone CDMA Network Project. The GCL carried the following terms: 2 percent interest, 5 year grace period, 20 year maturity, 1% management fee, and 0.75% commitment fee. The proceeds from this loan were, in turn, on-lent to Sierratel, a state-owned fixed line telecommunications operator in Sierra Leone. The purpose of this project was to purchase Huawei’s fixed-wireless telecommunications equipment and thereby help Sierratel install a 3G (Code Division Multiplex Access, or CDMA) network in the country. The project sought to install 100,000 lines in Freetown and 14 other cities. Huawei was the contractor responsible for implementation. The project commenced on April 24, 2009 and it was completed. However, its precise completion date is unknown.

Additional details

Chinese project name: 升级塞拉利昂农村电信网项目 or CDMA农村覆盖网络.

Number of official sources

12

Number of total sources

24