Chinese Government provides RMB 86 million interest-free loan for Friendship Bridge Construction Project

On January 9, 2008, the Chinese Government and the Government of Syria’s Ministry of Transport signed an exchange of letters, which committed an interest-free loan for the Friendship Bridge Construction Project. According to a dataset of foreign-financed projects that the Syrian Planning Commission (SPC) provided to UNDP Syria in May 2011, the Chinese Government provided an RMB 86 million ($12,659,200) interest-free loan to the Government of Syria’s Ministry of Transport for the Friendship Bridge Construction Project. The purpose of the project was to build a “friendship bridge” (友谊桥) across the Euphrates River in the Deir ez-Zur province. It was originally anticipated that the project would be implemented on a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) basis. On August 10, 2007 and August 11, 2007, at the invitation of the Director of the Syrian Planning Commission (SPC), the Chinese Ambassador to Syria visited the project site. RMB 180,000 of the loan proceeds were allocated for the implementation of a feasibility study for the Friendship Bridge Construction Project. However, it does not appear that this project ever entered implementation.

Additional details

This project is also known as the Friendship Bridge Across the Euphrates Project. The Chinese project title is 友谊桥 or 中叙友谊桥 or or 德尔祖尔友谊桥项目 or 中国援建的中叙友谊桥项目. The Arabic project title is مشروع جسر الصداقة or مشروع جسر الصداقة على نهر الفرات. Some sources identify the face value of the loan as RMB 85,900,000 rather than RMB 86,000,000. Since loan terms for the interest-free loan are unavailable, AidData has set maturity period to 20 years by default and grace period to 10 years by default per China's Foreign Assistance White Paper (http://www.cidca.gov.cn/2018-08/06/c_129925064_3.htm) which states that the maturity period of interest-free loans is 20 years, with a drawdown period of 5 years, grace period of 5 years, and repayment over 10 years. AidData treats the drawdown period as providing 5 years of additional grace.

Number of official sources

9

Number of total sources

16