November 4 2010
By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing
Financial Times
Cambodia’s largest mobile phone company will borrow $591m from Chinese banks to help pay for a contract with Chinese telecom group Huawei Technologies.
The loan, which will be the biggest financing project of its kind in Cambodia’s history, underscores the growing influence of China and its companies in the country’s economy.
CamGSM, the wholly-owned telecom subsidiary of Royal Group, Cambodia’s largest private conglomerate, will sign a financing package arranged by Bank of China, and a five-year $500m equipment and services contract with Huawei in a ceremony scheduled for Thursday afternoon.
The signing ceremony in the capital Phnom Penh will be attended by Wu Banguo, one of the nine most powerful men in China’s communist hierarchy. A number of other agreements, including large electricity deals involving Chinese state power producer Huadian, will also be signed during Mr Wu’s visit.
The flurry of Sino-Cambodian deals comes just three days after Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, said during a visit to Phnom Penh that Cambodia should maintain a foreign policy that was not “too dependent” on China.
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