VTB to participate in financing gas-processing complex in Ust-Luga, to be major creditor - Kostin
MOSCOW. April 16 (Interfax) - VTB plans to participate in financing the project to build a complex for processing ethane-containing gas in Ust-Luga, Leningrad Region, President and Board Chairman Andrei Kostin said.
"We will finance. We will be a major creditor of the project," Kostin told reporters on the sidelines of the Data Fusion forum.
A draft government resolution was published on Tuesday, by which VTB plans to place a subordinated deposit from the National Wealth Fund (NWF) totaling 200 billion rubles "in order to finance a government-approved self-sustaining infrastructure project."
The funds are intended for the project in Ust-Luga, Kostin said. The total amount of financing from VTB to construct the gas-processing complex will be "several times more" than the bank will receive on deposit from the NWF. Kostin did not name the exact amount.
Plans to attract a subordinated loan from the NWF as part of financing the Moscow-St. Petersburg high-speed highway construction project also remain in force, Kostin said.
The amount of 93 billion rubles was previously mentioned.
As previously reported, the construction operator for the Ust-Luga facility is RusChemAlliance, a company equally owned by PJSC Gazprom and JSC RGD. The complex will become Russia's largest gas processing plant and the world's second largest facility by capacity. Its annual processing capacity will reach approximately 45 billion cubic meters of gas. The total investment project cost (including VAT and operational cash flow during the investment phase) amounts to nearly 5 trillion rubles at nominal prices.
The previously approved project passport stipulated 900 billion rubles in financing limits from the NWF, to be allocated as both subordinated and non-subordinated deposits at VEB.RF (up to 440 billion rubles at 6% annual interest and up to 460 billion rubles at the Central Bank of Russia's key rate, with a maximum term of 16 years). According to explanatory notes to the draft government resolution, VTB's subordinated deposit will be funded within this 900 billion ruble quota. Funds for the non-subordinated deposit have not yet been placed, and the reduction of this allocation will enable financing for VTB's subordinated deposit, according to the notes.
The Finance Ministry assumes that the bank will receive the subordination "very quickly," Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseyev told reporters on Wednesday. Answering a question about why it was necessary to transfer part of the money pledged to the NWF for the project to VTB, he suggested that this way the bank's "credit-deposit multiplier will function better."
