Chinese Government provides 20 million RMB grant for Mobile Container Inspection Equipment for Guayaquil Port Authority through ETCA

On January 12, 2006, the Chinese Ambassador to Ecuador and Ecuador's Foreign Minister signed an exchange of letters, which committed grant funding for the Mobile Container Inspection Equipment Project, worth 20 million RMB. The purpose of the project was to acquire and install mobile container inspection equipment (un equipo móvil de inspección de contenedores), in Guayaquil Port, to be used by the Guayaquil Port Authority. It was funded through the 20 million RMB grant provided in an Economic and Technical Cooperation Agreement (ETCA) signed November 17, 2005. The equipment was to be manufactured by the Chinese company NUCTECH Company Limited. Additionally, in the Letters of Exchange, the Chinese government agreed to send a team of technicians to Ecuador to help with installation, recalibration, and training associated with the project. The Chinese government began transporting the equipment on October 15, 2006. The equipment was officially handed over on December 11, 2006 in Guayaquil. The project is also referred to as "Equipos de rayos x para contenedores" in Spanish. The Chinese project title is 厄瓜多尔一台移动式集装箱检测设备项目.

Additional details

The ETCA that funded this project, signed November 17, 2005, has not been coded as a separate umbrella project, due to the entire grant amount provided very likely funding this project exclusively. It has been assumed that the project cost is 20 million RMB. According to "La Cooperación Bilateral Ecuador-China...", the project cost was 2,537,468.50 USD. An exchange rate between USD and RMB of approximately 1:7.8818 would result in this project cost being equivalent to 20 million RMB, which would have been the exchange rate on either October 27 or 30, 2006 (per https://www.poundsterlinglive.com/bank-of-england-spot/historical-spot-exchange-rates/usd/USD-to-CNY-2006). It has therefore been assumed that the full grant provided in November 2005 was used for the project due to (1) the extreme closeness in these two transaction amounts, accounting for the exchange rate around the time of project implementation, and (2) the fact that other projects listed the tables seem to have their amounts reflect the values of the projects at the time they were implemented, not when the table was complied (see, for example, project "Medicamentos para prevención del dengue" which was said to be worth 500,000 USD in the table and in the Letters of Exchange from 2005). "La Cooperación Bilateral Ecuador-China..." is an academic source that cites, for this transaction amount, a now-inaccessible Ecuador government website. Parts of the website are accessible via Wayback Machine, though not the exact link cited.

Number of official sources

4

Number of total sources

6