YEREVAN, JUNE 11, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian government today made a decision to provide a loan worth 63,2 billion AMD from the state budget for extending the duration of the operation of 2^nd power unit of the Nuclear Power Plant.

Minister of territorial administration and infrastructures Suren Papikyan reminded that within the frames of this program Armenia and Russia signed agreements in 2014 and 2015 on provision of a loan. The talk is about the 300 million USD, 270 million USD is a loan and the 30 million USD is a grant.

“Starting December 2018 negotiations for extending the term of the loan started. Due to the events before 2019 it wasn’t possible to spend the existing loan resources completely. At the moment the loan balance is 107 million USD, but now we consider it more appropriate to provide a loan from Armenia’s own resources. In order to complete the project it is proposed to provide 63,2 billion AMD budgetary loan from the state budget”, the minister said.

In turn Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said the existing [Russian] loan in terms of amount and terms was not so much convenient for organizing the further operation of the NPP. “In fact, we are attracting funds from domestic sources which will undoubtedly be made in much better terms and will further raise the leverage of the government to increase the level of efficiency of the use of this loan”, he said, adding: “We have a concrete task to raise the efficiency of the NPP which is not only a management issue, but also an issue of energy security”.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan