China Development Bank provides RMB 695 million loan tranche to Turkcell for infrastructure investments and procurement of equipment and hardware from Chinese suppliers in August 2020 (Linked to Project ID#67356)

On August 10, 2020, China Development signed an EUR 500 million loan agreement with Turkcell İletişim Hizmetleri A.Ş. (“Turkcell”) — the largest (private) mobile phone operator in Turkey — to finance investments in the company's infrastructure and the procurement of equipment and hardware from Chinese suppliers. The loan consists of two tranches: an EUR 420 million tranche that carries an 8-year maturity, 3-year grace period, and annual interest rate of EURIBOR plus a 2.29% margin, and an RMB 695 million tranche that carries an 8-year maturity, 3-year grace period, and annual interest rate of 5.15%. Project ID#67356 captures the EUR tranche and Project ID#92620 captures the RMB tranche. As of March 31, 2021 and June 30, 2021, Turkcell had utilized (borrowed) EUR 57.1 million under the EUR 420 million loan tranche and RMB 147.3 million under the RMB 695 million loan tranche. The signing of the loan agreement comes following a signed memorandum of understanding between China Development Bank and Turkcell in December 2019. After the memorandum of understanding was signed, Osman Yılmaz, Executive Vice President of Turkcell Finance, said in his statement, ‘We are planning to be ready for financing in these days when our 5G studies are accelerating with our current technology. Our goal is to meet both our current purchases and 5G purchases that may occur in the future.’

Additional details

1. AidData has calculated the all-in interest rate of the EUR loan tranche by adding 2.29% to the average 6-month Euribor in August 2020 (-0.433%).

Number of official sources

2

Number of total sources

4