Rosatom wants to delay two NWF tranches for Finnish NPP by two years
MOSCOW. March 23 (Interfax) - The state Rosatom corporation is proposing to shift by two years the drawdown of two tranches of National Welfare Fund (NWF) money equivalent to 1.4 billion euros in total for the construction of the Hanhikivi 1 nuclear power plant in Finland.
Rosatom has drafted a government order on the matter, a source at a profile agency told Interfax.
The company wants to move the tranches planned for 2026 and 2017 back. It now wants to draw down the 2016 tranche, equivalent to 800 million euros but not more than 51.2 billion rubles, in 2018; and the 2017 tranche equivalent to 600 million euros, but not more than 41.3 billion euros, in 2019.
As of January 1, 2016, the general contractor for the NPP, RAOS Project, which is a subsidiary of Rusatom Energo International, had paid 191.1 million euros from the NWF into the project. The financing schedule was shifted in 2015 because the Finnish Ministry of Employment had delayed its review of the licensing documents and did not submit a request to the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) to begin assessing project safety procedures until the beginning of September 2015, Interfax's source said, quoting an explanatory note to the draft order.
"In parallel with RAOS Project's tender procedures and the signing of contracts, scheduled work is under way to obtain additional sources of funding for the project, in particular a long-term credit from international banks, with export credit agency guarantees, to procure a foreign-made turbine generator unit, and to secure a deferment of payments for the procurement of works/services from foreign vendors/contractors. Also, the terms for pre-paying and paying for signed and planned contracts are being reviewed and tightened. Rosatom expects these measures will help to optimize the fields in which the NWF funds are used, giving rise to the opportunity to delay the need to obtain the next tranches until later," the note says.
