[Economics] IDB Invest allocates $36.8 million for the telecommunications market in Ecuador

[#Steeven.™]

The project will finance new investment opportunities and help consolidate a business model based on the shared use of telecommunications towers.

IDB Invest, a member of the Inter-American Development Bank Group, announced this Thursday that it has mobilized $ 36.8 million in financing to promote the telecommunications infrastructure market shared in Ecuador with Phoenix Tower International (PTI), one of the infrastructure companies fastest growing telecommunications provider in the world.

The agreement involves the mobilization of $ 25 million in financing from Proparco, a development finance institution owned by the French Development Agency and private shareholders, and $ 11.8 million from CIFI, a non-bank financial institution that is a leader in infrastructure and energy financing in Latin America and the Caribbean.

This agreement potentially contributes to four of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): end poverty (SDG 1), decent work and economic growth (SDG 8), industry, innovation and infrastructure (OSD 9) and partnerships for the goals (SDG 17).

Resource mobilization builds on the strong history of collaboration between IDB Invest and Proparco since the signing of a framework co-financing agreement in 2017. Proparco is the private sector financing arm of Agence Française de Developpement Group (AFD Group) and For more than 40 years, it has provided financing and support to both companies and financial institutions in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East in key development sectors.

The project will finance new capital investment opportunities, mainly for new distributed antenna systems opportunities and complies with the initial financial plan for which IDB Invest granted an $ 80 million loan to PTI, in order to boost the independent infrastructure market. telecommunications in Ecuador and promote a more efficient development of this sector in the country. The transaction will help consolidate a business model based on the shared use of telecommunications towers in the Ecuadorian market.

The project is also expected to improve the productivity of the sector, since mobile network operators will be able to develop their networks more efficiently and economically, taking advantage of the existing infrastructure of the project, which will contribute to reducing the connectivity gap in Ecuador, through of the expansion of mobile broadband networks and the reduction of costs for operators.

PTI owns and operates more than 12,500 towers, 986 km of fiber, and more than 80,000 other wireless infrastructures and related facilities in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe.