隨著中國收緊“一帶一路”，非洲國家正在修補和湊合 (1/2)

Recently Yahoo News on-line reported the following:

African nations mend and make do as China tightens Belt and Road (1/2)

Sun., November 21, 2021, 10:12 p.m.

By Duncan Miriri

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Deep in Kenya's Great Rift Valley, members of the National Youth Service tirelessly swing machetes to clear dense shrubs obscuring railway tracks more than a century old.

It's a distinctly low-tech phase for China's Belt and Road drive in Africa to create the trade highways of the future.

There's not enough money left to complete the new 1,000-km super-fast rail link from the port of Mombasa to Uganda. It ends abruptly in the countryside, 468 km short of the border, and now Kenya is resorting to finishing the route by revamping the 19th-century colonial British-built tracks that once passed that way.

China has lent African countries hundreds of billions of dollars as part of President Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which envisaged Chinese institutions financing the bulk of the infrastructure in mainly developing nations. Yet the credit has dried up in recent years.

On top of the damage wrought to both China and its creditors by COVID-19, analysts and academics attribute the slowdown to factors such as a waning appetite in Beijing for large foreign investments, a commodity price crash that has complicated African debt servicing, plus some borrowers' reluctance to enter lending deals backed by their natural resources.

"We are not in the go-go period anymore," Adam Tooze, a Columbia University historian, said about China's overseas investment projects. "There is definitely a rebalancing from the China side," said Tooze, whose new book Shutdown examined how COVID-19 affected the world economy, adding that Beijing's current account surplus was "dwindling somewhat".

Chinese investments in the 138 countries targeted by BRI slid 54% from 2019 to $47 billion last year, the lowest amount since the BRI was unveiled in 2013, according to Green BRI, a China-based think-tank that focuses on analysing the initiative.

In Africa, home to 40 of those BRI nations, Chinese bank financing for infrastructure projects fell from $11 billion in 2017 to $3.3 billion in 2020, according to a report by international law firm Baker McKenzie.

This is a blow for governments who were anticipating securing Chinese loans to build highways and rail lines linking landlocked countries to sea ports and trade routes to Asia and Europe. The continent is facing an estimated annual infrastructure investment deficit of around $100 billion, according to the African Development Bank.

"The pandemic has actually made things worse. Those numbers will go up," said Akinwumi Adesina, the president of the bank, citing the need for additional infrastructure to support health services.

Hold-ups have hit some other BRI projects across the continent, such as a $3 billion Nigerian rail project and a $450 million highway in Cameroon.

China's ministry of foreign affairs did not respond to a request for comment.

Beijing officials have said that the two sides have a mutually beneficial and cooperative relationship and that lending is done openly and transparently.

"When providing interest-free loans and concessional loans, we fully consider the debt situation and repayment capacity of the recipient countries in Africa, and work in accordance with the law," Zhou Liujun, vice chairman of China International Development Cooperation Agency told reporters in late October.

Another Chinese official, who declined to be named as they are not authorised to speak to the media, said Beijing always intended to implement BRI gradually to manage debt default risks by countries or projects.

'RAILWAY WILL BE BUILT'

Officials in Kenya said its rail route were long-term projects that would be seen through over time, without giving any specific timeframe. The COVID-19 has presented the world with unforeseen and unprecedented challenges, they added.

"Eventually, this standard gauge railway will still be complete because it is part of what we call the Belt and Road Initiative," said James Macharia, Kenya's transport minister.

The government has already spent about $5 billion on its new rail link, and can't currently afford the additional $3.7 billion needed to finish it. The last station hooked up is only accessible by dirt roads.

Hence engineers in the Rift Valley are no longer building new infrastructure, but rather shoring up colonial-era viaducts and bridges in an operation that the government estimates will cost about 10 billion shillings ($91 million).

There are knock-on effects and, over the border in Uganda, construction on a modern railway line has been delayed because it's supposed to link to the Kenyan one.

That has been one factor in the hold-up in a $2.2 billion loan from the Export-Import Bank of China (Exim Bank), David Mugabe, spokesperson for Uganda's Standard Gauge Railway project, told Reuters.

In Nigeria, the government turned to London-headquartered Standard Chartered Bank this year to finance the $3 billion railway project https://www.reuters.com/article/nigeria-railway-funding-idUKL5N2OE43A initially slated to receive Chinese backing. Standard Chartered declined to comment on the deal, citing confidentiality agreements.

In Cameroon, the $450 million highway linking the capital Yaounde and the economic hub of Douala, whose funding was secured from China's Exim Bank in 2012, stalled in 2019 as the bank stopped disbursing further tranches of the loan.

Exim Bank did not respond to a request for comment on its loans to Uganda and Cameroon.

(to be continued)

Translation

內羅畢（路透社）- 在肯尼亞東非大裂谷的深處，國家青年服務處的成員不知疲倦地揮舞著大砍刀，清除遮擋了一個多世紀歷史的鐵軌的茂密灌木。

對於中國在非洲建設“一帶一路”建設未來貿易高速公路而言，這是一個明顯低技術的階段。

連接蒙巴薩(Mombasa)港到烏干達的新的 1,000 公里超高速鐵路沒有足夠的資金來完成。它在距離邊境 468 公里的鄉村突然終止，現在肯尼亞正在通過改造曾經通車的 19 世紀英國殖民時期建造的軌道來完成這條路線。

作為習近平主席提出的“一帶一路”倡議（BRI）的一部分，中國向非洲國家提供了數千億美元的貸款，該倡議予計中國機構會為主要是發展中國家的大部分基礎設施提供資金。然而，近年來信貸已經竭盡。

除了 COVID-19 對中國及其債權人造成的損害外，分析師和學者將放緩歸因於一些因素，例如北京對大型外國投資的興趣減弱、大宗商品價格暴跌使非洲償債變得複雜，以及一些借款人不願參與以自然資源為貸款交易担保。

哥倫比亞大學歷史學家Adam Tooze 在談到中國的海外投資項目時說：“我們不再處於繁榮時期”。 Tooze 說: “中國方面肯定會重新平衡”, 他的新書 Shutdown 研究了 COVID-19 如何影響世界經濟，並補充說北京的經常賬戶盈餘 “有所減少” 。

根據專注於分析該倡議的中國智庫綠色一帶一路(Green BRI) 的數據，在中國BRI 目標的 138 個國家的投資, 比較2019 年下降了 54%，跌至去年的 470 億美元，這是自 2013 年推出 BRI 以來的最低金額。

根據國際律師事務所貝克·麥堅時 (Baker McKenzie) 的一份報告，在非洲，一共有 40 個“一帶一路”國家，中國銀行對基礎設施項目的融資從 2017 年的 110 億美元下降到 2020 年的 33 億美元。

這對內陸國家的政府, 希望獲得中國貸款去建設高速公路和鐵路線以連接其國至海港, 及通往亞洲和歐洲的貿易路線來說是一個打擊。據非洲開發銀行稱，非洲大陸每年面臨約 1000 億美元的基礎設施投資赤字。

該銀行行長Akinwumi Adesina 說:“大流行實際上使情況變得更糟。這些數字還會上升”，並指出需要額外的基礎設施來支持衛生服務。

整個非洲大陸的其他一些“一帶一路”項目也遭遇了阻礙，例如價值 30 億美元的尼日利亞鐵路項目和價值 4.5 億美元的喀麥隆高速公路。

中國外交部沒有回應置評請求。

北京官員表示，雙方有著互利合作的關係，貸款是公開透明的。

中國國際開發合作署副主任Zhou Liujun在十月尾對記者說:“在提供無息貸款和優惠貸款時，我們充分考慮了非洲受援國的債務情況和還款能力，並依法辦事”。

另一位因無權對媒體發言而拒絕具名的中國官員表示，北京一直打算慢慢實施“一帶一路”倡議，以管控國家或項目的債務違約風險。

'鐵路將建成'

肯尼亞官員表示，其鐵路線是長期項目，會跟隨時間而堅持下去，但沒有給出任何具體時間表。他們補充說，COVID-19 給世界帶來了無法預料和前所未有的挑戰。

肯尼亞交通部長James Macharia說:“最終，這條標準軌距鐵路仍將會完工，因為它是我們所謂的‘一帶一路’倡議的一部分”。

政府已經在新鐵路上花費了大約 50 億美元，目前無法負擔完成它所需的額外 37 億美元, 只能通過泥路連接到最後一站。

因此，裂谷的工程師不再建造新的基礎設施，只進行工程去保養殖民時代的高架橋和橋樑, 一項政府估計將耗資約 100 億先令（9,100 萬美元）的工程。

這產生連鎖反應。在烏干達邊境，一條現代鐵路線的建設被推遲，因為它應該連接到肯尼亞那邊的鐵路線。

烏干達標準軌距鐵路項目發言人David Mugabe告訴路透社，這是中國進出口銀行（Exim Bank）的22億美元貸款被擱置的一個因素。

在尼日利亞，政府今年求助於總部位於倫敦的渣打銀行為 30 億美元的鐵路項目提供資金, https://www.reuters.com/article/nigeria-railway-funding-idUKL5N2OE43A , 基本上獲得中國的支持。渣打銀行以保密協議為由拒絕對這協議發表評論。

在喀麥隆，連接首都Yaounde和Douala經濟中心的 4.5 億美元高速公路在 2012 年從中國進出口銀行獲得資金，但在 2019 年停頓下來，因為該銀行停止發放更多貸款。

中國進出口銀行沒有回應就其對烏干達和喀麥隆的貸款置評的請求。

(to be continued)

Note: The Export–Import Bank of China (China Exim Bank 中國進出口銀行) is one of three institutional banks in China chartered to implement the state policies in industry, foreign trade, economy, and foreign aid to other developing countries, and provide policy financial support so as to promote the export of Chinese products and services. Established in 1994, the bank is subordinated to the State Council. (Source: Wikipedia)