Ecuador Gets $571 Million China Loan for Hydroelectric Plant
Ecuador’s Finance Ministry said the Export-Import Bank of China will lend the country $571 million to build a hydroelectric plant, the second loan from the Asian nation announced this week.
China and Ecuador will sign the 15-year, 6.35-percent loan in Beijing in August, the ministry said today in an e-mailed statement. It will pay for 85 percent of the cost of the 487- megawatt plant, known as Sopladora, the statement said.
“These electricity plants will permit the country to have sufficient electric energy to cover national demand,” the ministry said in the statement.
China has become Ecuador’s biggest credit source since the South American country defaulted on $3.2 billion of its foreign debt in 2008 and 2009, as the world’s second-biggest economy seeks to secure energy and commodities supplies.
Ecuador, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ smallest member, received a separate $1.68 billion loan in June 2010 to build a hydropower plant in the Amazon region in what would be the South American nation’s biggest engineering project ever.
On June 27, Ecuador said it signed a separate $2 billion loan with China Development Bank Corp. to fund budgeted public works projects. That loan has an interest rate of 6.9 percent and a maturity of eight years, according to the Finance Ministry.
To contact the reporter on this story: Nathan Gill in Quito at ngill4@bloomberg.net Laura Price in London at lprice3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Papadopoulos at Papadopoulos@bloomberg.net
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