KAZAKH, JAPANESE BANKS SIGN 30m-DOLLAR LOAN AGREEMENT

Excerpt from report by Kazakhstan Today news agency web site on 1 April

The signing of a credit agreement between the Bank TuramAlem joint-stock company and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) on the provision of an export credit line to the tune of 30m dollars took place in Almaty today, a Kazakhstan Today correspondent has reported.

The credit line is co-financed by the Japanese commercial bank UFL Bank Limited, one of the four major Japanese banks.

The chairman of the board of the Bank TuranAlem, Yerzhan Tatishev, noted at the signing ceremony that "the goal of the loan is to finance mid-term and long-term projects of the Bank TuranAlem's customers related to importing goods and equipment from Japan".

The agreement, in Tatishev's opinion, "opens up new opportunities for Japanese and Kazakh enterprises. The deal has been struck for 10 years on very favourable conditions". Specifically, according to Tatishev, "the floating rate has been set on the basis of a four-or-five-year LIBOR [London InterBank Offered Rate], the sum of every individual credit given as part of the credit line must total up to 85 per cent of the sum of a contract struck by an importer. The margin of the Japanese bank is no more than 0.6 per cent".

Tatishev noted that "the credit line will be very successful and competitive in comparison with other credit lines provided by European and other countries".

In turn, the deputy head of the JBIC's second department of international operations, Fukushiro Tanaka, said that "of all Central Asian countries, Kazakhstan is the major client of our bank in terms of aggregate volume of financing. And we are glad that through financial support of Japanese companies' operations we have managed to deepen ties between the two countries of the Great Silk Road".

"In future, we plan to sign a second agreement on a bank credit. It is now difficult to specify when it will be signed. Everything will depend on the implementation of today's deal," Tanaka stressed.

[Passage to end omitted: background]

Source: Kazakhstan Today news agency web site, Almaty, in Russian 0522 gmt 1 Apr 04