Caribbean Net News: Digicel invests additional $22m in Haiti

KINGSTON, Jamaica: Proparco has signed a Credit Agreement with Unigestion Holding S.A. to finance the development of Digicel Haiti, a new mobile telecommunication operator. The main project shareholder is the Digicel Group, one of the largest Caribbean mobile telecom operators.

With its US$22 million loan, Proparco is the main lender of this project, which is also financed by IFC (World Bank Group), FMO (The Netherlands), EDC (Canada), Bank of Nova Scotia (Canada) and Citibank (which is also the arranging bank). The total debt financing amounts to US$64 million.

Out of the Proparco US$22 million loan, US$10 million were drawn from the European Financing Partners (EFP) mechanism created by several European Financial Development Institutions and EIB.

Digicel Haiti will allow hundreds of thousands of new subscribers to access GSM services over the next years, contributing to a significant increase of the mobile penetration in Haiti, which was below 6% prior to Digicel's arrival on May 3rd, 2006.

Digicel Haiti should have multiple positive effects on the market: higher quality of service at more competitive rates, mobile services access to populations located in urban and peri-urban areas that were not served before. One month after its successful launch, Digicel Haiti has received an overwhelming response from the people of Haiti with a strong subscriber base already secured.

According to Colm Delves, Digicel Group CEO, "this new financing from Proparco allows Digicel to create the optimum capital structure in Haiti as it continues to roll out our operation. It also demonstrates a strong vote of confidence from the world's leading banks in the future of Haiti as well as an endorsement of Digicel Haiti's business success to date and our vision to bring the benefits of wireless technology into the lives of more and more Haitians".

This project will play a significant role in the social and economic development of Haiti: rollout of a state of the art telecommunication infrastructure at competitive prices, creation of thousands of direct and indirect jobs, additional income for the Haitian government and foreign direct investment. Therefore, the project contributes to the achievement of several of the UN Millennium Development Goals, such as the improvement of indicator 47 (Telephone lines and cellular subscribers per 100 inhabitants (ITU)).

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