Chinese loan for Steam Power Plant "Kostolac B" - investment package worth 700m USD

(Dragan Jovanović and Đin Čunšeng)

- The CEO of Steam Power Plant "Kostolac", Dragan Jovanović, and Đin Čunšeng, the Vice President of "Chinese National Corporation for Export and Import of Electro-Mechanical Equipment", signed the "Protocol for Steam Power Plant Kostolac B Project" on November 24th - it is stated on the website of Steam Power Plant "Kostolac" (www.te-ko.rs ).

Speaking of the importance of this project, the work on which started in April 2009, Dragan Jovanović pointed out that it was the investment package of large projects for Kostolac, which included revitalization of two blocks of 350 MW, construction of units for elimination of sulfur from smoke gases, capital investments in enlargement of the capacities of strip mine "Drmno" and construction of new power supply capacity B3 (power will be determined in the feasibility study). The value of these works should amount to about 700m USD.

- After we agree on the details of the technical offer, we will be able to move on to the preliminary commercial offer. By the way, these talks were initiated by the Ministry of Energy and Mining, and the first official decision came from the Administrative Board of EPS. Now we expect the Government of Serbia to make some appropriate decisions of technical nature and that "Chinese National Corporation" submits the recommendation from the suitable institutions of the People's Republic of China for making it the project coordinator - said Jovanović.

The President of the Administrative Board of EPS, Dr. Aca Marković, pointed out on that occasion that the Administrative Board of EPS had made the decision on November 13th that the request for that project be forwarded to the Government of Serbia and that he expected that the Government would make appropriate decision within the next ten days.

Đin Čunšeng pointed out that, within the scope of the measures introduced because of the economic crisis, the Chinese Government had adopted the set of measures with the aim of helping Chinese companies and creating the opportunity for granting preferential loans to other countries in amount of 10 billion USD. As Čunšeng explained, that definitely should be used in order for the realization of the project in Kostolac to start already at the beginning of the next year.