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Oliver Kazunga Senior Business Reporter
CHINA Exim Bank will before the end of the month disburse $65 million, which is the first batch of a $218,9 million facility for the NetOne Network Expansion Phase II Project.

Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa while presenting the 2015 national budget last week, said the disbursement was part of the $218,9 million loan agreement that the government and China Exim Bank signed in July this year.

“Government signed a Concessional Loan Agreement with China Exim Bank worth $218.9 million for the NetOne Network Expansion Phase II Project.

“The first disbursement of $65 million by China Exim Bank is expected by end of December 2014,” he said.

Chinamasa added that equipment worth $15 million had already been bought and delivered into the country, utilising the contractor’s own funds in anticipation of the first disbursement.

The International Monetary Fund in its recent report following the conclusion of Article IV consultations, said the China Exim Bank loan has a 20-year maturity, with a grace period of five to seven years and a two percent interest rate, which is equivalent to a grant element of 28,3 percent.

Before the approval of the loan, NetOne had already started preparing for network extension and expansion of its scope of business making strides with initiatives such as its mobile money transfer service called One Wallet.

The state-owned mobile network operator recently applied for a national datacasting licence from the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe.

Datacasting or the broadcast of data is a service that delivers information via radio waves in different forms that include text, data, speeches and images to any receiver or equipment that accepts or processes the information.

The datacasting licence is one of the 10 broadcasting licences offered by the regulator.

NetOne was set up in 1996 to provide mobile communication services and started with 2,000 subscribers operating from a centralised switch.