Narrative
Full Description
Project narrative
On March 21, 2012, the Chinese Government and the Lebanese Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR) signed an Economic and Technical Cooperation Agreement (ETCA), in which the Chinese Government committed RMB 50 million ($7.5 million USD) in grant funding to Lebanon for unspecified purposes. The ETCA stipulated that the grant would be allocated at a later date for projects to be mutually agreed upon by the two governments and that it would be disbursed through a bank account established between China Development Bank and the Banque du Liban (Lebanon’s central bank). The Council of Ministers of Lebanon approved the donation via Resolution No. 86 on February 29, 2012. According to September 2018 correspondence between AidData and Lebanon’s Ministry of Finance, the grant proceeds from this ETCA were ultimately allocated for the acquisition of equipment for the Lebanese Government, which issued Decree No. 1453 for this purpose on March 3, 2012.
Staff comments
1. This project is known as "Economic and Technical Cooperation - 2012" in the Lebanese Council for Development and Reconstruction's (CDR) database. The agreement number is 9279 (see "CDR Funding - Economic and Technical Cooperation - 2012"). 2. The CDR claims that the USD equivalent of this RMB 50 million grant was $7,839,138 USD, but official sources and media sources at the time (such as pg.3 of "Aid Coordination Newsletter Issue 53 April 2012" and "هبة صينية بقيمة 7.5 مليون دولار لتمويل مشاريع اقتصادية في لبنان", respectively) report an approximately $7.5 million USD figure. 3. As this is an ETCA, which is a financing mechanism specific to China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), AidData has coded MOFCOM as the specific Chinese Government institution responsible for providing this grant.