China and South Africa have signed 26 bilateral deals on Thursday worth 41.9 billion yuan($6.5 billion) after talks between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his South Africancounterpart Jacob Zuma, mainly to build infrastructure in the continent's most industrializednation.
Among them are agreements between the two nuclear operators State Nuclear PowerTechnology Corp and Necsa as well as a memorandum of understanding between SouthAfrica's Standard Bank and China's top ICBC, the BRICS Post reported on Friday.
Also, China Export Credit Insurance Corp signed a deal with Transnet to provide the SouthAfrican logistics company $2.5 billion in loans to pay for equipments from Chinesecompanies.
South Africa's President Jacob Zuma hailed relations between the two nations as their "bestever" after the two leaders held talks focused on boosting investment.
"China and South Africa relations are at a new historical level. We want to build it into a modelfor relationships between China and other emerging economies," Xi said at a newsconference following the talks.
As part of the 26 deals, China will lend South Africa's cash-strapped power utility Eskom $500million.
South Africa is in the throes of a chronic electricity crisis that is increasing costs for industryand discouraging investment. Part of its response is to build new nuclear plants that expertssay may cost as much as $100 billion.
China will also help to build a car manufacturing plant on South Africa's coast which shouldbegin exporting vehicles to other African countries by the end of 2017.
South African Investec, a Johannesburg-based investment bank and asset management firm,agreed to work with China Export-Import Bank to enhance export finance, project finance, andthe internationalization of the Chinese yuan.
The two nations also agreed to waive visa requirements for diplomatic and governmentpassport holders.
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