Kazakhstan may seek $2 bln from China for ENRC, Kazakhmys

10:13, 8 July 2010

ASTANA. July 8. KAZINFORM Kazakhstan may seek $2 billion in Chinese loans to build smelters and help meet the country's plan to double metal output by 2015, with money going to companies such as Kazakhmys Plc and Eurasian Natural Resources Corp.

The state-owned National Wellbeing Fund Samruk-Kazyna is "considering financing of new smelters of about $2 billion," Chief Executive Officer Kairat Kelimbetov said by e-mail today. The money will be "either for Kazakhmys, Eurasian Natural Resources Corp. or other Kazakh companies," he said.

Kazakhstan plans to double the production and export of metals in five years, President Nursultan Nazarbayev said in January. Kazakhmys and ENRC, the world's largest producer of ferrochrome on a chrome-content basis, have already sought investment from China for new smelters and mines.

Samruk-Kazyna will also seek more than $1 billion from China to build a railroad from Zhetygen, near the financial capital Almaty, to Khorgos, a customs terminal on the Chinese border, Kelimbetov said. ENRC last year pulled out of the rail project to connect its plants to China after failing to get an agreement from the Kazakhstan government for the project, Kazinform reports with a reference to Kazakhstan News Bulletin No18 issued by the Kazakh Embassy in the U.S.A.

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