China Development Bank provides $20 million loan for Car Factory Reconstruction Project (Linked to Project ID#66783)

On May 10, 2015, China Development Bank opened a $300 million credit line with Belarusbank — a state-owned bank — to finance an unspecified set of infrastructure projects in Belarus (captured in Project ID#66783). CDB subsequently approved a subsidiary $20 million loan under this credit line to support a Car Factory Reconstruction Project. The borrowing terms of the loan are unknown. Belarusbank on-lent the proceeds of the CDB loan to a joint venture called CJSC "Unison" [СП ЗАО «Юнисон»]. CJSC "Unison" then used the loan proceeds to reconstruct a car factory in the town of Obchak within Minsk district. The project was expected to take place between April 2017 and February 2019.

Additional details

CJSC "Unison" was founded in 1996 as a Belarusian-British joint venture. The plant currently assembles Cadillac, Chevrolet, and Zotye cars. Given that Zoyte (Zoyte International Automobile Trading Co., Ltd.) is a Chinese car company and 50% of the proceeds from the CDB loan had to be used to purchase Chinese goods and services, CJSC "Unison" likely used the loan to purchase good and/or services from Zoyte. In June 2018, Zoyte and CJSC "Unison" signed an agreement worth $560 million to facilitate assembly production of 30,000 Zoyte electric cars in Belarus by 2022. The CDB loan for this project is not included in the Overseas Development Finance Dataset published by Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center in December 2020.

Number of official sources

5

Number of total sources

8