Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 6
By Rashid Shirinov – Trend:
Kazakhstan plans to modernize and technically re-equip nine automobile and one railway checkpoint, Trend reports via Kazakh media.
To this end, Exim Bank of China will provide Kazakhstan with a soft loan.
"Under the agreement, Exim Bank of China will provide a soft loan of no more than 2,062 billion yuan ($307.4 million) to the government of Kazakhstan for the modernization and technical re-equipment of Kazakhstan's checkpoints located on the borders with China and Uzbekistan," Kazakhstan’s First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Alikhan Smailov said.
The loan will be issued for 20 years at 2 percent per annum. Seventy percent of the loan amount will be spent for the purchase of Chinese equipment for the checkpoints. The project is planned to start at the end of 2019 and be completed in 2022.
"It is necessary to develop the customs infrastructure of checkpoints at the Kazakhstan section of the Eurasian Economic Union's external border. The existing infrastructure does not allow for a uniform and accelerated passage of the increasing flow," the minister explained.
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