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Nicaragua and China signed a loan equivalent to about $430 million on Thursday for the construction of an international airport and a liquefied gas terminal, officials reported.
The agreement comes as part of a “strategic partnership” announced this week after a telephone conversation between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Nicaraguan counterpart, Daniel Ortega, said Laureano Ortega Murillo, the president’s son and presidential advisor for investments. international trade and cooperation.
“We feel proud and happy to be able to carry out this important ceremony tonight here in Managua and on Friday the 22nd there in China,” Ortega Murillo told official media after the virtual event.
The Chinese funds will be allocated to the Punta Huete International Airport project and the Three Esferas Project for the storage of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), indicated Ortega Murillo.
The Minister of Finance and Public Credit, Iván Acosta, said that “we are talking about mobilizing important resources for the country, plus 430 million dollars.”
He added that the agreement is in the Chinese currency, the yuan, which he described as “an important advantage for the country in the de-dollarization strategy.”
The state-owned company China CAMC Engineering will work on the reconstruction, expansion and improvement of the Punta Huete airstrip, about 58 kilometers north of Managua, to turn it into an international airport, and on the LPG plant.
“We are facing a project to transform the country” with the new airport that will allow greater connectivity with Asia, Europe and other regions, Acosta added in statements to Channel 4.
Both countries announced several infrastructure projects carried out by Chinese companies in October.
Last August, both countries signed a Free Trade Agreement that will come into force on January 1.
Nicaragua and China have accelerated their cooperation ties since they reestablished diplomatic relations in 2021, after Managua cut ties with Taiwan, which Beijing considers its own territory that it seeks to recover.
Beijing and Managua maintained diplomatic relations in the first government of Sandinista Daniel Ortega, in the 1980s, but after his electoral defeat in 1990, his successor as president, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, broke with the Asian giant and established ties with Taiwan. .
bur/mas
2023-12-22 05:58:37
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