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China Firms Bid for Nigerian GSM Contracts
Two Chinese telecom equipment makers, Shanghai Bell and Huawei Technologies, have submitted bids for projects planned by Nigeria's state-owned Nitel.
The projects include a new GSM mobile phone network, and transmission and switching systems' upgrade for Nitel's creaking telecoms infrastructure.
Shanghai Bell, a joint venture formed by the Chinese government, Alcatel and a Belgian development fund, submitted a US$42 million bid, but offered to add an extra 43,000 lines.
The financial details of Huawei's bid were unavailable.
Along with Shanghai Bell and Huawei, other four foreign companies, Motorola, Ericsson, Siemens and Alcatel, are also in the race for the GSM contract.
Motorola has submitted the lowest bid of US$29.9 million for the GSM network of 118,000 initial lines and promised to roll it out in five months.
Nigeria's privatisation agency -- the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), said the bid ranged from US$29.9 million to US$52 million.
The terms offered by the bidders were either credit financing or deferred payment, the officials said, adding that cash-strapped Nitel would need a total of US$150 million to finance the two projects.
Nitel was facing a critical cash situation after it took commercial bank loans to pay a US$285 million licence fee for the GSM franchise it was awarded earlier this year.
"Nitel will be unable to pay staff salaries in September if it does not renegotiate the GSM licence loans," one official said.
According to BPE, Nitel was due for privatisation in September, it was important not to delay the launch of its GSM service in order for it not to lose out to competitors.
Huawei, Siemens, Shanghai Bell and Alcatel also tendered for the provision of digital microwave and fibre optic links and a primary switching center.
(www.chinadaily.com.cn)
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