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SG Corporate & Investment Banking (SG CIB) and BNP Paribas Energy Commodities Export Project (ECEP) have successfully arranged a state-of-the-art export financing in favour of Vietnam Construction and Import-Export Corporation (Vinaconex) for the construction of the Cam Pha cement plant.


Vinaconex is one of the leading corporations in the construction industry in Vietnam. It’s focus is on investment projects, namely new urban development, real estate and property development, infrastructure/engineering projects, industrial and building material production and commerce.


The construction involves two separate projects: a grinding plant with an annual capacity of 1.5mn tons; and a cement plant with an annual capacity of 2.3mn tons. This programme had been mandated by the Vietnamese ministry of construction and the loan is backed by a sovereign guarantee provided by the Vietnamese government.


SG CIB and BNP Paribas have already closed the €
20mn financing of the grinding station in October 2004 with the support of Euler Hermes, the German export credit agency (ECA) and of Coface, the French ECA, combining three German buyer credits (SG CIB acting as Euler Hermes “agent) and one Coface buyer credit (BNP Paribas acting as Coface’s agent) under a single and harmonised facility.


The second phase of the project – the cement plant located in the north of the country – provided SG CIB and BNP Paribas with the opportunity to further fine tune the financing structure granted to Vinaconex.


The cement plant involves five different suppliers from Japan, Germany, and Switzerland who had individually negotiated their commercial contracts with Vinaconex without an all-encompassing EPC contract. Coordination was also necessary with the different ECAs: Japan’s JBIC and Nexi, Germany’s Euler Hermes and Switzerland’s ERG.


BNP Paribas acted as JBIC/Nexi agent and SG CIB as Euler Hermes and ERG agent.


Based on a clear cashflow and payment synchronisation logic, the banks structured a financing package made up of the following:

  •  A European facility combining three Euler Hermes-covered credits and one ERG-backed credit facility benefiting from one unique repayment starting point;
  •  A Japanese facility benefiting from JBIC’s direct financing and Nexi’s support adapted to the Japanese package. This is the first Japanese buyer credit to Vietnam in more than five years with the previous transaction dating back to 1999.


  • This €
    75.2mn global facility allows Vinaconex to synchronise payments out of the cashflows generated by the cement plant. It also offers simplified management of the credits, while meeting the ECAs’ expectations in terms of risk profile and credit features as defined in the OECD consensus.

     

    The loans have a 10-year reimbursement period with embedded fixed rate options based on CIRR and interest rate swaps, with a partial capitalisation of the interest during construction.