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Belarus asks Russia for $9bn loan to build nuclear power plant

Belarus has asked Russia for a government loan of $9 billion for a period of 25 years for the construction of a nuclear power plant, First Deputy Prime Minister Uladzimir Syamashka told reporters in Minsk on Wednesday.

According to Mr. Syamashka, Belarus expects to receive deferment of repayment until the plant is completed, that is, until 2017. The loan is to be spent for the construction of both the plant and the necessary infrastructure. A loan agreement may be signed at a meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Belarusian-Russian Union State in March.

“The agreement will be signed if the political will is in place, although the situation earlier changed 180 degrees,” Mr. Syamashka said.

The nuclear power plant, which is to have a generating capacity of around 2,400 megawatts, is to be built in the Hrodna region near the Lithuanian border.

The construction of the plant by a Russian company would cost some $6 billion, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said following talks with his Belarusian counterpart, Mikhail Myasnikovich, in Moscow on January 20.

"Russia is ready for the implementation of the project," Mr. Putin said, noting that Moscow was ready to provide Belarus with a loan for funding the project.

Atomstroiexport, a subsidiary company of Russia's Nuclear Energy State Corporation (Rosatom), was earlier selected by the Belarusian government to be the prime contractor.

Russia initially agreed to provide a $6-billion tied loan for the nuclear power plant project, but Minsk wanted the loan to be untied and amount to $9 billion.

Belarusian government officials initially said that a loan agreement would be signed in the first quarter of 2009. They postponed the expected date to the summer of 2009, then to the following winter and eventually ceased to make any predictions.

While meeting with Belarusian First Deputy Prime Minister Uladzimir Syamashka in Minsk on January 25, Rosatom head Sergei Kiriyenko said that the construction of the first unit of the Belarusian nuclear power plant was expected to be completed in 2017, and that a loan agreement between the finance ministries of the two countries would be signed no later than June.

The plant’s foundation pit will start being excavated in September and the excavation work should be largely over before the end of the year, Mr. Kiriyenko said.

Two agreements on the calculation of the project costs were signed in Minsk on January 25.

According to the recently adopted Strategy for the Development of the Energy Potential of the Republic of Belarus for the period until the end of 2020, a total of $9,334 million is to be spent between 2011 and 2020 on the construction of the nuclear power plant. The Strategy says that $3 billion will be spent on the project between 2011 and 2015 and $6,334 million between 2016 and 2020.