The Solomon Islands government confirmed yesterday that it had signed, sealed, and would now deliver on a contract with Chinese tech giant Huawei to build 161 telecom towers in the country, courtesy of a $96 million 20-year concessional loan from the Exim Bank of China.
The view from many people in the Solomon Islands is that the numbers don’t add up. The view from the region is that the infrastructure may pose a security risk.
“The biggest issue is if it’s sustainable for us as a country. Whether we get it from Australia or whoever, can we handle it?” Solomon Islands journalist Dorothy Wickham told Crikey. “People are more worried about affordability, not so much the geopolitics of it.”
In a statement, the Solomon Islands government said the project was approved by an independent review that showed it would generate enough revenue to fully repay both the principal loan amount and interest costs.
Crikey has obtained a copy of the KPMG report submitted in April. In short, it says nothing of the sort, finding Huawei’s proposed $40 million profit was more to the tune of a $140 million loss.
Pacific digital expert from the ANU’s department of Pacific affairs Amanda Watson said big question marks remained over how exactly the Solomon Islands government landed on Huawei.
“Did the Solomons put out a public request through which any company could put forward a proposal, or did Huawei approach the government with the idea?” she said. “If this is an idea that has come from Huawei, then I have some concerns.”
Many locals are concerned about being kept in the dark about the deal. “If there was consultation going on, the public was not aware of it,” Honiara-based Solomon Islander Emmanuelle Mangalle said. “The whole switch to China was done without public consultation. That’s the reason people fear it.”
Director of the Institute of National Affairs Paul Barker said this was a perspective shared by many countries in the region; there was a severe lack of transparency in contracting deals with China.
Last month the Philippines government cancelled a number of Chinese loans taken out under the previous administration for big-ticket Chinese infrastructure projects because of lack of clarity around cost burdens, the imposition on state-owned enterprises, and concerns about data collection in what Barker described as “quite clearly a China cloud”.
Huawei equipment in the Pacific is neither “new” nor “secret”. Handsets, modems and mobile phone towers are everywhere, but legitimate security concerns remain about how both China and Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare plan to use the Chinese technology.
Earlier this month, the Solomon Islands government ordered the national broadcaster SIBC to self-censor news and publish only Sogavare-friendly content. It followed a move last month to strip SIBC of its status as a state-owned enterprise. The government argued it was paramount to protect the public against “lies and misinformation”.
From his position in PNG, Barker said he’s seen many Solomon Islanders expressing concerns about the government’s rapid shift to realign the country with a more authoritarian system of governance: “Where that coincides with greater linkages to Chinese institutions, security concerns are exacerbated.”
The Solomon Islands government has pledged to complete almost half the 161 towers in time for next November’s 2023 Honiara-held Pacific Games.
For many, this will be enough to offset the secrecy of the deal.
“Right now, nobody in the Solomon Islands sees what the Western world is seeing. But beggars can’t be choosers,” Wickham said. “It’s going to come with strings somewhere. We’d be naïve to think it won’t. They’ll show themselves somewhere down the line. Here we never see problems until they happen.”
At 1% interest for 20 years. Sounds like my kind of debt trap.
Once I read her bio that the author reports on targeted disinformation and influence operation in Australia and Asia Pacific my bull o’meter started spinning crazy.
And what business is it of Australia’s what another Sovereign nation does with expanding and upgrading its infrastructure? Could it just be the usual Sinophobic Media in Australia at play?
True, perhaps Australia prefers they just use a piece of string and coconuts to communicate.
And this article straight out of the ASPI playbook.
This stinks of corruption. The people dont want this. The money is most likely inflated to include bribes to members of parliament which the public will have to pay back with interest over forever. Plus it may be that the govt defaults which may be China’s agenda here. What happens then is that China will then foreclose and take possession of the telecommunications of the country. Not something the person in the street wants I would assume. Then the security issues become really serious.
An agenda at 1% interest over 20 years? Hard to default on that. Infrastructure is the backbone of the development of any country and China is the best at doing it. The “China Debt Trap” conspiracy theories abound but nobody can ever provide actual evidence. I suspect we were bidding for the project too and this is the usual sour grapes. Security risk? No testing has ever revealed flaws in Huawei equipment to my knowledge. Would we be whining or even covering this if the SI went with a White, Western nation?
In contrast to the ubiquitous Western debt traps, courtesy of the World Bank and IMF, which are then used to force developing countries to flog off their public assets to Western corporations, evict farmers and fishermen from their ancestral homes to flog/lease the real estate to Western corporations, etc. A nice little earner (for the West).
Look to Sri Lanka for the evidence of indebtedness.
You need to look again if you think China is the cause. Not by a country mile.
https://thediplomat.com/2022/08/is-china-to-blame-for-sri-lankas-debt-woes/
“The view from the region is that the infrastructure may pose a security risk “
Maybe they had a chat with East Timore and went for the least worst option.
“Crikey has obtained a copy of the KPMG report submitted in April. In short, it says ”
From solomons.gov.sb/ …
“As a result, the Steering Committee contracted a local expert and a private consulting firm from New Zealand, … “
So – who assumes they based their decision on the KPMG report – or that KPMG fully understood or was unbiased as to what was going on ?
“Pacific digital expert from the ANU’s department of Pacific affairs Amanda Watson said big question marks remained over how exactly the Solomon Islands government landed on Huawei. ”
Well ANU – asked your good buddies at the ASPI did you. Quite sure they’d be more than happy to quack.
“The whole switch to China was done without public consultation,”
Where’s our list on the Nations the Australian public voted we should engage with.
“Right now, nobody in the Solomon Islands sees what the Western world is seeing ‘
Lucky Solomon Islands. No Turdoch Media, or Billy Birtles’s or Stan Grants.
Interestingly, to this day, no one has published a technical article outlining security flaws in the Huawei infrastructure. They all have them of course – usually the result of flawed engineering (apart from the Septic stuff spying on Angela Merkel – and that’s the one we know about).
My MBN (Moron Band Network – or is that Malcolm Band Network) has been dropping out up to 30 times a day for the last 3 weeks. Been down for up to 6 hours (for “maintenance”) 5 times in the last 2 weeks. I WANT A HUAWEI NETWORK – please. Oh – and looks like they’ll get a 6G network before we do.
One would have to presume that there was a few mill worth of backhander in that 100.