Narrative
Full Description
Project narrative
In 2001, China Eximbank and the Regional Water Company of Tehran — an Iranian state-owned enterprise — signed a $121.55 million buyer’s credit loan agreement for the Taleghan Dam and Power Plant Construction Project. This loan carried an estimated maturity length of 14 years and an estimated grace period of 5 years. The loan repayment period began in the second half of 2006 and ended in 2014. The interest rate of the loan is unknown. This project was reportedly the first project to have received buyer’s credit insurance from China Export Credit Insurance Corporation (Sinosure). The proceeds of the loan were used to finance 85% of the cost of a $143 million commercial contract with Sinohydro Group Ltd., which was signed on January 12, 2001. The purpose of the project was to construct a dam and an 18MW power plant in Qazvin Province, approximately 135 kilometers northwest of Tehran. More specifically, the project involved the construction of a 101 meter high clay core rockfill dam with a volume of 15.3 million cubic meters, a spillway with a maximum discharge of 2,500 cubic meters per second, and a hydropower station with an installed capacity of 18,000 kilowatts. The project officially started on March 15, 2002. It was completed on August 31, 2006. An official inauguration ceremony was held on September 26, 2006. This project won the Luban Award for Overseas Hydropower Projects.
Staff comments
1. This project is also known as the Taleghan Dam and Power Plant Construction Project, the Taleghan Dam and Hydropower Project, the Taleghan Dam and Water Conservancy Project, or the Tarigan Dam and Hydropower Project. The Chinese project title is 承建的伊朗塔里甘大坝水利枢纽工 or 承建的伊朗塔里甘大坝水利枢 or 建的伊朗塔里甘大坝水利枢 or 伊朗塔里干水利枢纽工程. The Persian project title is سد و نیروگاه طالقان or سد طالقان. The Arabic project title is سد طالقان. 2. The China Eximbank loan that supported this project is not included in the Overseas Development Finance Dataset that Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center published in December 2020. 3. One Sinohydro source identifies the total cost of this project as $165 million rather than $143 million, which suggests that there may have been unforeseen cost increases during implementation. 4. There is also evidence that China Construction Bank issued an additional loan to Sinohydro as part of an EPC+Financing arrangement (see Record ID#67604). 5. According to the World Bank's Debtor Reporting System (DRS), the weighted average interest rate of all official sector lending from all Chinese creditors to government and government-guaranteed borrowing institutions in Iran was 4.0949% in 2001. AidData estimates the interest rate of the China Eximbank loan that supported the Taleghan Dam and Power Plant Construction Project by using this figure. See https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ef7q4y9pxjk6q3syuqmjy/May-2024-DRS-Extraction-of-Data-on-Official-and-Private-Chinese-Loans-to-Iran-and-Borrowing-Terms.xlsx?rlkey=wiqjmhuwunp3jelz3jyfepny8&dl=0