Media release

Australian Minister for Trade, Mark Vaile

Monday, September 4, 2000

Australia Signs GSM Contract with Bangladesh

Trade Minister, Mark Vaile, today welcomed Ericsson Australia's signing of a $US26million ($A45.6m) contract with TM International (Bangladesh) Ltd (a subsidiary of Telekom Malaysia) to expand their GSM network in Bangladesh.

Mr Vaile said this was the first time that Ericsson Australia had won a contract to supply GSM equipment to a Telekom Malaysia group entity.

"The win positions Australia well for further such business," Mr Vaile said.

Mr Vaile said finance for the contract was arranged by ANZ Investment Bank with the support of Australia's export credit agency EFIC under their Export Finance Guarantee scheme.

"The finance was structured to include a significant amount of local currency (Taka) in order to hedge as far as possible the borrower's foreign exchange exposure. This is the first time that an Export Credit Agency has supported such a Taka facility and was a major point of differentiation in Ericsson Australia's bid."

Under the Financing arrangements, ANZ Grindlays' Dhaka branch will arrange and provide the Taka portion of the debt, whilst the USD portion will be arranged and provided via ANZ Singapore.

Mr Vaile said service exports from Australia were moving from strength to strength and were now worth $26.3 billion or 24% of total exports.

"Services exports are now the fastest growing sector of Australia's trade. Australia has long been recognised as a technology leader and this win further highlights the high level of services and solutions offered by Australian firms such as Ericsson."

In the 10 years to 1998-99, service exports grew at an average 10 per cent annually compared with 7 per cent for goods.