Azerbaijan, Baku, Dec. 4 / Trend E. Kosolapova/
An opening ceremony of new electric locomotive plant took place in the industrial park in Kazakh Astana on Tuesday, Eurasian Development Bank (EDB) reported.
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev took place in the opening ceremony.
The plant will manufacture four-, six-and eight-axle locomotives with asynchronous traction motors designed for both freight and passenger rail services. The locomotives will be produced according to Alstom's technologies. Alstom and Transmashholding will supply components for locomotives production. The plant's annual capacity will hit 100 sections of electric locomotives.
The new locomotives are primarily aimed at growing demand of Kazakh railways. Moreover it is planned to export 40 percent of the production to CIS countries.
The electric locomotives plant construction was partially funded by EDB. The bank has provided loan facility to Electrovoz Kurastyru Zauyty (EKZ) which is a project operator, to the amount of 10 billion tenge (more than $66 million) for a period of 10 years. The total project cost is over 18 billion tenge (150.52 tenge = $1). Thus the amount of initiators' participation in the project hit 8 billion or 44 percent of all investments.
The EKZ is a joint venture established in 2010 specifically for this project. Its founders are JSC Remlokomotiv (a subsidiary of JSC National Company Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (Kazakh railway) (50 percent share in the authorized capital), Alstom Holdings - French engineering company, one of the world's leading manufacturers of power equipment and railway transport (25 percent), and JSC Transmashholding - the largest company in Russia in the field of transport engineering (25 percent).
Within the plant opening ceremony, an agreement on supply of new Kazakh locomotives to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan was signed.
Eurasian Development Bank is an international financial institution founded by Russia and Kazakhstan in January 2006 with the mission to facilitate the development of market economies, sustainable economic growth and the expansion of trade and other economic ties in its member states. EDB's charter capital exceeds $1.5 billion. The member states of the Bank are the Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan
