Narrative
Full Description
Project narrative
In 2006, China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and the Government of Mauritius signed an RMB 30,000,000 loan agreement for the CCTV Street Surveillance System and Island-Wide Digital Radio Communication System Project. This loan carried the following borrowing terms: a 20 year maturity, a 10 year grace period, and a 0% interest rate. It was repayable via annual installments between January 2017 and January 2027. The project involved the installation of 340 CCTV cameras in the Port Louis and Grand Baie areas, and the installation of an island-wide digital radio communications. China International Telecommunication Construction Corporation (CITCC) and Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co., Ltd. (浙江大华技术股份有限公司) were responsible for the CCTV Street Surveillance System project component. On December 10, 2009, CITCC signed a 270 million MUR commercial contract with the Mauritius Police Force. ZTE was responsible for the island-wide digital radio communications project component. It signed a contract with China International Telecommunication Construction Corporation (CITCC) on September 29, 2009 to provide the Mauritius Police Force with the requisite equipment for the island-wide digital radio communications component. The project officially commenced on March 24, 2010 and it was officially completed and handed over to the Mauritius Police Force on October 21, 2011. Deficiencies in the CCTV system that was installed led to a second, China Eximbank-financed Smart City Project (see Record ID#55627). More specifically, the he CCTV system featured low video resolution (720p) that could not be used with “intelligent applications”. As a result, all videos had to be manually filtered, which made the system less efficient than modern, automated systems. The absence of surveillance facilities and converged command centers also made it difficult for Mauritius’s Ministry of Public Infrastructure and Land Transport to comprehensively detect, analyze, and disperse urban traffic in real time. The China Eximbank-financed Smart City Project sought to address these challenges with a different contractor (Huawei).
Staff comments
1. This project is also known as the CCTV Surveillance System and Radio Communication System Project. The Chinese project title is 毛里求斯城市安全监控和无线通信指挥系统 or 毛里求斯城市安全监控系统和无线电通信指挥系统项目 or 援毛里求斯CCTV城市安全监控系统和集群通讯指挥系统项目. 2. Previously in 2005, China’s Ministry of Commerce and the Government of Mauritius signed an RMB 12,434,000 loan agreement (Record ID#1163) for the CCTV Street Surveillance System and Island-Wide Digital Radio Communication System Project. This loan carried the following terms: 20 year maturity, 10 year grace period, and 0% interest rate. It is repayable via annual installments between January 2016 and January 2026. In 2006, China’s Ministry of Commerce and the Government of Mauritius signed an RMB 29,200,000 loan agreement (Record ID#72993) for the CCTV Street Surveillance System and Island-Wide Digital Radio Communication System Project. This loan carried the following terms: 20 year maturity, 10 year grace period, and 0% interest rate. It is repayable via annual installments between July 2017 and July 2027. 3. In the database of Chinese loan commitments that it released in 2020 and re-released in 2021, SAIS-CARI does not record the three interest-free loans from MOFCOM for the CCTV Street Surveillance System and Island-Wide Digital Radio Communication System Project.