Indignazione perché l’azienda statale cinese è pronta a vincere un progetto UE da 320 milioni di euro in Africa

Now that’s funny.

Paying a different country to build shit in a different country. I love the waste

News like this are the reason why extremists are growing.

Expecting a private company to compete with a state-owned company is just ridiculous. State-owned companies can operate with negative margins for ages, as long as the state tells them so, and keep feeding them new loans (e.g. from state-owned banks).

The EU is basically being held hostage economically now. It cannot compete with China in non-market terms, but also cannot ask for fairer competition, because China now has lots of leverages to retaliate.

Foreign Aid stopped working for quite some time already. We should focus more saving our own economy instead of wasting money elsewhere. It also helps other countries as they become less dependent on outside help.

Why not actually help said African countries by helping them develop their own construction sectors? Let the projects be with collaboration.

Lending them money to spend back on european private companies is double-faced hypocrisy. Obviously no third-party companies rule is a given.

What’s the problem? The Europeans are lending money and the decision is based upon both technical and financial decisions where the article clearly said, “CRRC,” won both.

So CRRC is offering better and cheaper! Obviously the choice would be CRRC, the colonial days are over!

The outrage may be overdone and a bit astroturfy. Per the article:

>Scania is the only European bidder. The Swedish company employs more than 50,000 people and operates in more than 100 countries.

The project is providing 300 natural gas powered busses. So the infrastructure requirements are pretty minimal – deliver the busses. The Chinese offer included assembly in country and was at half the price.

EU Industry complains:
>“We would wish that Team Europe financiers acted a bit more patriotically,” said Frank Kehlenbach, the director of the European International Contractors (EIC) association.

And
>Meanwhile, a delegation from the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs is visiting Dakar this week for “bilateral meetings with Senegalese and other counterparts”, the ministry told Euractiv.

Business and political interests want you to be worked up over this so they can make more money, that’s pretty plain.

There are legitimate complaints about China having poor delivery performance. But the “let’s get European taxpayers to agree to build an overpriced thing in Africa where they can’t look closely at what our European corporations are doing” is pretty skeevy too.

Make 50% of the capital as gift then EU company can have it

EU projects are known for lots of money, mountain of paperwork and no real oversight.