Medvedev China Visit Sees Deal-signing Flurry
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 22, 2013) Russia’s state-owned development bank, VEB, agreed to borrow $1.9 billion from Chinese lenders, as part of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Beijing on Tuesday.
But Medvedev used the occasion to call for more direct investment between the two countries, which would take economic ties up a notch, rather than relying on the customary loan and trade deals.
“We have to pay attention to investment because things are not so good in that area,” Medvedev said in a joint news conference with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang after a signing ceremony. “We expressed the wish to strengthen investment cooperation, primarily direct investment into the economies of both countries.”
Under another of the banking deals inked at the ceremony, VEB will borrow $800 million from China Development Bank to fund a project to build office and retail space at the site of Moscow’s former Slava wristwatch factory near Belorussky Train Station.
Another agreement stipulates that VEB will take out a $400 million loan from the same Chinese bank to fund the construction of a power station in Kazakhstan.
In a third agreement, VEB secured a line of credit worth $700 million from the Export-Import Bank of China, for purposes that the parties did not disclose.
Medvedev and his Chinese counterpart also oversaw the signing of a number of other business deals.
In what appeared to be one of the direct investment agreements touted by Medvedev, East Siberian Metals Corporation, part of the multi-profile Metropol Group, signed a contract with China Nonferrous Metal Industry’s Foreign Engineering and Construction Company. Under the terms of the agreement, the Chinese company will design and build an ore processing plant in Buryatia, to the east of lake Baikal, at an estimated cost of $1.5 billion. The Chinese company will own half of the plant.
In a separate deal, Billionaire Oleg Deripaska, president of EN+, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Cao Peixi, president of state-owned power generation company China Huaneng Group.