Government Minister welcomes ZTE commitment and initiative

ZTE Corporation, China´s largest supplier of telecommunications equipment, is to strengthen its position as a market leader in North Africa and the Middle East by opening a manufacturing facility in Algeria.

In an agreement with well-established local company INATEL, ZTE will look to manufacture wireless fixed terminal and other equipment in Algeria. The signing took place at the Telecomp exhibition in Algeria and was witnessed by the country´s telecommunications minister, Mr. Amar Tou, and Government officials from several other countries.

"The new operation will allow us to locally manufacture products with our partner INATEL and we fully expect this co-operation to see us move into new ground for ZTE in the Algerian market," said Mr. Xiao Chunfa, general manager of ZTE Algeria.

Mr. Xiao added that ZTE will gradually increase its investment in projects across Algeria, and will utilize its advanced technologies to contribute to the national construction programme currently underway in the country. At the exhibition, Mr Xiao made a keynote speech titled "ZTE Corporation and the Renaissance of Algeria" in which he introduced ZTE´s recent achievements in global markets as well as market developments in Algeria.

At the manufacturing agreement signing ceremony, Algerian Government minister Amar Tou said that with the further opening up of the Algerian telecom market, the government was looking forward to enormous foreign investment and hoped other foreign companies like ZTE would co-operate with local companies, in order to boost the telecom infrastructure construction in the country.

ZTE has already built Africa´s largest CDMA WLL project in Algeria and continues to be successful in Africa: last month, ZTE beat all other competitor vendors to make the first ever 3G call in Tunisia; ZTE´s GSM products have been used in large-scale applications in Nigeria and Ethiopia; and, in 2004, ZTE was selected by Egypt Telecom to construct a large-scale CDMA network covering the Nile River Delta.

"Outside of China, we already have manufacturing facilities in Brazil, Sweden and the United States and we now have a base in more than 50 countries around the world," said Mr Xiao.

"ZTE is totally committed to supporting its customers locally and this ethos of world-class products backed by locally-based world-class people has been a key part of our year-on-year growth of 34%."

ZTE continually invests more than 10% of its revenues in research and development and has R&D facilities in 13 centres across the world. The Corporation´s staff are also highly qualified: more than 80% have a degree and over 500 hold doctorates.