Kazakh railways to borrow $100 mln in 2005

/REUTERS, Astana, Raushan Nurshayeva, November 9, 04/ - Kazakhstan's national railway company, JSC Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (KTZ), plans to borrow $100 million on financial markets next year to fund its development, it said on Tuesday. "We have sketched an investment programme worth 55 billion tenge ($419 million) for next year, and we plan to borrow $100 million of this sum," KTZ Vice-President Zhannat Satubaldina told a news briefing. Satubaldina did not say what kind of borrowing KTZ planned to make, but said that at the moment foreign bank loans looked more preferable than Eurobonds due to lower interest charged. ABN AMRO Bank has already arranged a debut, four-year $70 million loan for KTZ from a syndicate of foreign banks, with a margin of 200 basis points per annum over LIBOR. KTZ also said it had reached an agreement with ABN AMRO on its $122 million loan to purchase equipment from U.S. firm General Electric. The 10- year loan bears interest of three-month LIBOR plus 0.07 percent, Satubaldina said. KTZ, which handles over 68 percent of the Central Asian state's total cargo turnover and transports 57 percent of all passengers, is one of the country's highest rated firms. It has been assigned a "Baa3" rating by Moody's, "BB+" by Standard & Poor's and "BB+" by Fitch. ($1 = 131.21 tenge) [2004-11-09]