JA Solar Vietnam, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chinese solar manufacturer JA Solar, has completed a long-term buyer credit loan agreement of $68.4 million from China Minsheng Bank Corporation Limited.

The long-term credit agreement will be used to finance the procurement of equipment for JA Solar Vietnam’s 1.5 GW solar wafer manufacturing facility. According to the loan agreement terms, China Mingsheng Bank has agreed to provide the loan with a 7-year term following a signed corporate guarantee against the loan facility.

According to the loan agreement, the lender will provide the subsidiary with a loan facility for a seven-year term. JA Solar has also signed a corporate guarantee against the loan with China Minsheng Bank Corporation Limited.

JA Solar Holdings Company Ltd., a leading vertically-integrated module manufacturer, is one of the top module suppliers to India. In December 2017, it announced that its module shipments to India reached a capacity of 1 GW in 2017.

Mercom recently reported that major policy changes like imposing installation caps and reduction in the feed-in tariff (FiT) for solar projects in China could rock the solar industry globally and reduce module prices. As a consequence of these policy changes, the Asia Europe Clean Energy (Solar) Advisory (AECEA) has lowered its forecast for China’s solar capacity addition for 2018 from 40-45 GW to 30-35 GW. Chinese banks like China Minsheng Bank may support projects outside of China to compensate for the possible slowdown in demand.

According to a report by Mercom India Research’s India Solar Market Leaderboard 2018 that covers market share and shipment rankings across the Indian solar supply chain in 2017, JA Solar was the third largest solar module supplier to India.

Image credit: By Oregon Department of Transportation (Solar World wafer Uploaded by Smallman12q) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons