BNDES, the national development bank, is studying the allocation of 2.5 billion reals to finance new projects by GSM operators, upgrades by TDMA and CDMA operators, next generation networks (NGN), and finalization of wireline network digitization. All these projects are being analyzed, said Marco Antonio Albuquerque de Araújo Lima, BNDES director for logistics and telecoms, at the Total Telecom Fair in São Paulo Thursday, August 29. BNDES loans to telcos so far this year total 1bn reals, compared with 3.9bn reals in 2001, he said, noting that the drop reflects a crisis in the industry. The small CLECs failed to take off because they lacked capital structure and financing, he opined.
Finance
