[China Co-Financing Fund] IDB administers 34.3 million USD loan from CHC to Areaflin S.A. for Valentines Wind Project

On 15 March 2017, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) signed a loan contract with Areaflin S.A. to finance the Valentines Wind Project, through which the IDB would provide 68,565,072 USD from its ordinary capital (Loan 3454A/OC-UR, Loan 3454A/OC-UR-1), and the People's Bank of China would provide 34,282,536 USD (Loan 3454/CH-UR, 3454/CH-UR-1) via the China Co-Financing Fund for Latin America and the Caribbean (CHC). The IDB would administer an additional B loan of 16,969,855 USD, which would be provided by BBVA (Loan 3454B/OC-UR-SP-BBAOMAB). Acting on behalf of the IDB Group, the Inter-American Investment Corporation (IIC, now IDB Invest) disbursed this 119,817,463 USD financing package to Areaflin S.A. The total project cost was 170 million USD, with the remaining financing provided as counterpart financing. The IDB approval date for this loan financing was 6 May 2015, and it refers to this project as "UR-L1105 : Valentines Wind Project". The CHC loan had a maturity of 18 years, and it included two tranches with different interest rates. The first tranche totaled 24,683,613 USD with a fixed interest rate, and the second tranche totaled 9,598,923 with an interest rate of LIBOR plus the applicable lending spread for the Bank's ordinary capital loans. The IDB lending spread in Semester 1 of 2015 was 0.85% with a 0.25% credit fee. The IDB ordinary capital loan would carry the same terms, with 49,367,226 USD in the first tranche of financing from IDB's ordinary capital and 19,197,846 USD in the second tranche of financing from IDB's ordinary capital. The B loan from BBVA had a maturity of 16 years, with an interest rate of LIBOR plus the applicable lending spread for the Bank's ordinary capital loans. The 70MW Valentines Wind Project will provide clean energy to over 100,000 Uruguayans at cheaper rates than fossil-fuel based alternatives. It will generate approximately 311.4GWh of renewable energy per year and will reduce annual emissions by approximately 187,726 tons of CO2. The implementing agency is Areaflin S.A.. Uruguay's state-run electric utility, Administración Nacional de Usinas y Trasmisiones Eléctricas (UTE), owns 20% of Areaflin’s shares. The project attracted the remaining 80% of the capital through an initial public offering (IPO) on the Montevideo Stock Exchange in December 2016. On 12 May 2015, Areaflin S.A. signed a contract with Gamesa Eólica SL and Gamesa Uruguay SRL for the construction. Gamesa started on-site construction on 3 September 2015. The China Co-Financing Fund was established on 14 January 2013 with a contribution of 2 billion USD by the People's Bank of China, and it is administered by the IDB. For more information, see umbrella project ID #86526.

Additional details

1. “Uruguay Parque Generador Éolico Marzo 2020” lists the date of operation as October 2016; however sources from the implementing agency (“Informe al 30 de junio de 2017” and “Informe al 31 de diciembre de 2018”) list May 2017 as the official beginning of operation. May 2017 coded as end actual date.

Number of official sources

10

Number of total sources

10