Chinese Government provides $104 million loan for Phase I of 135MW Upper Atbara Hydropower Project

Project narrative

On April 6, 2010, China Water Power Corporation (CWE) and its parent company -- the Three Gorges Group Corporation -- formed a joint venture and signed an $838 million construction (commercial) contract with the Government of Sudan for Phase I of the the 135MW Upper Atbara Hydropower Project. Then, in 2011, the Chinese Government provided a $104 million loan to the Government of Sudan for Phase I of the the 135MW Upper Atbara Hydropower Project. The borrowing terms of the loan are unknown. The Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development also provided loans of 25 million Kuwait Dinars and 50 million Kuwait Dinars, respectively, for the project. Phase I involved the creation of two dams on the Atbara and Setit rivers in Eastern Sudan with a combined capacity of 135MW. It also involved the construction of a reservoir with a storage capacity of around 3 billion cubic meters and an irrigation area of 500,000 hectares. The joint venture between China Three Gorges Corporation and its subsidiary, China National Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Corporation, was the general contractor responsible for implementation; however, multiple subcontractors were also involved in this project Harbin Electric International Co., Ltd (HEI) assisted by implementing the electromechanical component of the project. Sinohydro 5th Bureau and the Sinohydro 7th Bureau undertook the 6,615.84-meter-long C1-B section of the project. Construction began in May 2010 and it was originally anticipated that the project would take about 65 months to finish (October 2015). Phase I of the project was ultimately completed on February 2, 2017, when the power complex began generating electricity. Then, on June 11, 2018, the last power generating unit was successfully connected to the national grid.