OREANDA-NEWS. January 08, 2016. ICBC has recently secured the appointment by the Ministry of Economy and Public Finance of Argentina for arranging USD 5.1 billion equivalent financing for the cooperative nuclear power project between China and Argentina, including a RMB loan of nearly RMB 30 billion. The loans would be insured by China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation.

The appointment directly facilitated China and Argentina to sign the commercial contract for Argentina’s fourth nuclear power station and the commercial framework contract for the fifth nuclear power station based on “Hualong One” technology. This was the first time for Hualong One, China’s self-developed third-generation nuclear power technology, to enter the international competitive market and also the first time for a commercial bank to steer export of self-developed nuclear power technology based on commercial principles.

It signaled that the internationalization of nuclear power in China made a major breakthrough and that the financial sector took a step forward in supporting commercial export of Chinese high-end equipment technology. China and Argentina initiated nuclear power cooperation negotiations five years ago. During this process, ICBC actively played its role as a commercial bank to optimize its financing package, and by leveraging its unique advantage as the largest Chinese bank in Argentina, the Bank closely cooperated with China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) and facilitated Argentine government to award two nuclear power station projects to CNNC.

At present, Chinese nuclear industry, as represented by CNNC, already has the capability of providing production services throughout the entire nuclear power industrial chain. With every single set of nuclear power unit being exported, over 80,000 sets of auxiliary equipment will be required and more than 200 enterprises will participate in manufacturing and construction. Around 150,000 jobs will be created and investment in each set of unit approaches RMB 30 billion. Given its contribution to the entire industrial chain, each set of unit can directly fuel RMB 100 billion investments through its life-cycle. It will greatly promote economic, trade and capacity cooperation between China and Argentina, deepen the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries and effectively improve the global competitiveness of Chinese high-end equipment manufacturing. Meanwhile, the two sets of units are projected to use over RMB 50 billion cross-border RMB loans, which will play an important role in promoting cross-border use of RMB.

In recent years, by closely following the national strategic layout, ICBC has deepened its international and diversified business development and actively driven Chinese high-end equipment manufacturing such as nuclear power, high-speed rail and communication equipment to go global. By the end of June 2015, ICBC financing for supporting equipment and capacity to “go global” already exceeded USD 200 billion with a financing balance of around USD 110 billion.