Chinese Government provides RMB 20 million interest-free loan for rehabilitation of the access road to the Mugere Hydroelectric Power Plant

On October 27 and 29, 2008, China’s Ambassador to Burundi and the Government of Burundi signed an agreement to rehabilitate an 8.42 km access road to the Mugere Hydroelectric Power Plant. The Chinese Government reportedly committed an RMB 20 million interest-free loan for this project. Then, on August 13, 2009, China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) signed a contract with the Burundian Ministry of Public Works and Equipment to complete the road rehabilitation project and thereby support ongoing maintenance work at the 8MW Mugere Hydroelectric Power Plant (see Project ID#825). According to the Government of Burundi's Development Assistance Database (DAD), the Chinese government ultimately disbursed $1.84 million in support of this project. China First Highway Engineering Company (CFHEC) was the contractor responsible for implementation. Construction began in April 2009 and ended on January 12, 2010.

Additional details

1. The French project title is la réhabilitation de la route d’accès à la centrale hydroélectrique de Mugere. The Chinese project title is 布穆杰雷水电站进场道路修复项目 or 布隆迪穆杰雷水电站进场道路修复项目 or 援布隆迪穆杰雷水电站进场道路项目. 2. This loan is omitted from the database of Chinese loan commitments that SAIS-CARI released in July 2020. 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

5

Number of total sources

9