site.btaPresident Urges Government to Check Carefully Potential Belene N-plant Investors

ESD 10:06:01 23-08-2019
LN1012ES.104
104 POLITICS - PRESIDENT - BELENE N-PLANT - COMMENT

President Urges Government to Check Carefully Potential Belene N-plant Investors and Their Plans, Make Sure no
State Financing Is Required


Sofia, August 23 (BTA) - President Rumen Radev urged the government to check carefully the potential investors in the Belene N-plant construction project, their capacity and plans, and make sure no state financing is committed. "Having so many [potential] investors [in Belene] is a good sign and shows that this N-plant is needed and can be a profitable undertaking because when businesses want to participate in a project, they know there is a gain in it," the President said Thursday in a comment for the press as quoted by his Press Secretariat.

His comment came a couple of days after thirteen bids were submitted for participation in the Belene project, including seven by potential strategic investors. Among them are Russia's Rosatom, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. Ltd and the China National Nuclear Corporation, as well as companies believed to be connected to controversial energy business owner Hristo Kovachki.

The head of State said that he would not rush to make assessments and expects to see a short list of the candidates.

He said the biggest risk for the Belene project is to see, after the declared good intentions, that the selected investors lack the needed resources in which case the government will have to provide guarantees in one form or another. That would ruin the project and its very idea: to implement it without the participation of the State, he added. LN/