Rostelecom wants to receive 60 bln rubles under project financing mechanism - Kalugin
MOSCOW. April 10 (Interfax) - OJSC Rostelecom is preparing requests for 60 billion rubles under a project financing program, Rostelecom President Sergei Kalugin said in an interview with Interfax.
Projects for which Rostelecom might ask for concessional loans include the construction of data centers, the modernization of IP/MPLS data networks and the construction of optical networks. "All of these projects are not only important for our company, but they also have a notable effect on the Russian economy as a whole," he said.
The company's CFO Kai-Uwe Mehlhorn has said that Rostelecom is also interested in project financing for fiber optic lines between Sakhalin, Magadan and Kamchatka. The operator is planning to start building an underwater line in the second quarter of 2015 costing around 3 billion rubles.
The Russian government and Central Bank launched the project financing mechanism at the beginning of this year to support investment projects after access to market financing was complicated. A project must be under 20 billion rubles, and the limit for borrowed funds is 80% of the total, or 16 billion rubles. Russia also might guarantee up to 25% of the loans.
Banks in the framework of the program may refinance loans at the Central Bank that were provided for investment projects at an interest rate of 9% per annum. The rate for borrowers may exceed this figure by 2.5 percentage points at most (that is, the final rate is limited to 11.5%, when the key rate of the Central Bank is 14%).
Seven loans have been approved to receive project financing so far. Six of the loans total 48.1 billion rubles, while the parameters of a loan to Znamensk Sugar Plant, controlled by Russian state-owned agricultural holding Rusagro, have not been disclosed.
Only one telecommunications company has been able to use the program - Tele2, which belongs to VTB , Rostelecom, Bank Rossiya , OJSC Sogaz and Alexei Mordashov. The operator received 16 billion rubles from VTB to build a network in Moscow. Tele2 will likely receive another 16 billion rubles in project financing to build a network in the regions, Kalugin said.
Project financing has become an attractive instrument for Russian companies amid high interest rates on the lending market. Several dozen companies have applied for concessional loans.
The Central Bank has said that it is ready to increase the program's limit from 50 billion rubles to 100 billion rubles.