Russia has agreed to lend Bulgaria 3.8 billion euros (5.4 billion dollars) to build a 2,000-megawatt nuclear power plant at Belene on the Danube, the Dnevnik daily newspaper reported on Friday.
In its online edition, the newspaper quoted Bulgarian Energy Holding official Ivan Atanasov, who is in charge of the Belene project, as saying that Russia had "opened procedures" to provide Bulgaria with the loan.
A spokeswoman for the Bulgarian Energy Holding (BEH) contacted by AFP declined to confirm the report, saying BEH had not received any official answer from the Russian side so far.
Russian officials announced last September that their government was ready to lend Bulgaria as much as 3.8 billion euros to help build the plant and Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev officially requested the credit during a visit to Moscow in April.
Bulgaria had contracted Russia's company Atomstroyexport to build two 1,000-megawatt third generation pressurised-water nuclear reactors at Belene in a move to restore its position as a leading electricity exporter on the Balkans.
But the Bulgarian Energy Holding and its partner in the project, German utility RWE, have so far failed to secure private financing for the project which left state-backed export credits as the only option to fund the plant, experts said.
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