Latin American mobile giant America Movil has become the latest telecoms firm to receive funding from the China Development Bank (CDB), China’s fifth-largest commercial bank. The Mexico-based firm said in a statement this week that it had secured a ten-year loan worth US$1 billion to invest in network infrastructure across various Latin American markets. The deal is the first time that the bank has invested in a Mexican corporation, though it has been active in the telecoms space, most recently extending a US$15 billion credit line to Chinese vendor ZTE.

America Movil separately announced its first-quarter results this week, exceeding expectations with a 18.7 percent rise in quarterly profit to MXN16.4 billion (US$1.15 billion). According to a Reuters report, analysts had forecast net earnings of MXN15.199 billion. The company added 3.9 million new customers in the quarter – mostly in Mexico and Brazil – bringing its total to 186.6 million.