Announcement of Eighteen Million Eighty Thousand US Dollars, 280-Room Hotel Planned for Center of Dakar on June 5, 1980

• Intemational Finance C01poration 1818 H Street, NW. Washington. D.C. 20433, U.S.A. 202-477-1234 IFC Press Release No. 80/28 Thursday, June 5, 1980 $18.8 Million, 280-Room Hotel Planned for Center of Dakar Novotel SIEH (Societe d'Investissement et d'Exploitation Hoteliers), with assistance from Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas and the active sur,port of the Senegalese authorities, is undertaking a 200-room hotel project in the center of Dakar. Senegalese and foreign institutional and private investors and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) are joining in financing the international class hotel which will cost, including provisions for contingen- cies, about $18.8 million equivalent. The investments are being made in Societe Hoteliere du Barachois to • finance the construction of the hotel in the Le Barachois area in the center of Dakar. The project will help relieve the present hotel shortage in Dakar and is expected to result in estimated net foreign exchange earnings of some $4.2 mil- lion equivalent a year. It will also create approximately 200 direct jobs. Novotel, which will supervise the implementation of the project and operate the new hotel, is a major French hotel organization which manages more than 200 hotels in 21 countries. Shareholders are providing equity financing for the project amounting to $6.2 million equivalent. Local investors include: private investors, insurance companies, financial institutions, the industrial group, Lesieur Afrique, the Banque Nationale de Developpement of Senegal, and Societe Financiere Senega- laise pour le Developpement de l'Industrie et du Tourisme (SOFISEDIT). Other equity investors include Novotel and Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas, and Societe Internationale Financiere pour les Investissements et le Developpement en Afrique (SIFIDA), a regional development finance institution. Caisse Centrale de Cooperation Economique, a major French development finance institution, .is making a loan of approximately $4.8 million equivalent. • IFC, the World Bank affiliate that encoutages economic development by assisting  • - 2 - the private enterprise sectors of developing countries, is providing a loan of $3 million. Other loans are being provided by SIFIDA, $600,000 equivalent, and SOFISEDIT, $400,000 equivalent. A bank pool, of which Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas and Union Senegalaise de Banque are the leaders, will complete the financial plan with a mediUDrterm loan and buyers' credits. The greater part of the hotel's clientele is expected to be businessmen but it will also cater to the tourist trade. The facilities will consist of a nine-story building with outdoor terrace, swimming pool, bars, restaurants, coffeeshops, conference rooms and a banquet hall. Construction has begun and the hotel is scheduled for completion by early 1982. The project is in line with the Government's efforts to encourage the hotel sector, which is Senegal's third largest source of foreign exchange earn- ings after groundnuts and phosphates. • •