China Targets Kyrgyzstan Natural Resources
Reuters
Monday, January 31, 2005. Page 6.
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan -- China will build a hydropower station and two metals plants in Kyrgyzstan as well as a railway and highways in exchange for access to the Central Asian state's natural resources, the Kyrgyz prime minister said.
Nikolai Tanayev, who spoke on state television late Thursday, said Beijing had pledged a $900 million investment package for a set of construction projects in return for Kyrgyz electricity, iron, tungsten and tin.
He gave no details of the deal with the giant but resource-starved neighbor. "In the next few days [China] will send experts here to carry out a feasibility study for an investment to build a railway in return for our natural resources," Tanayev said.
He said the railway would link China with ex-Soviet Central Asian neighbors Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and would run further to Europe.
He said the vast but so far little-explored Zhetymskoye iron ore deposit, which is near the planned railway route, could also see construction of a metallurgical plant. He did not say where the second plant would be built.
Any of the projects mapped out by Tanayev, should they come to fruition, would give a boost to the impoverished mountainous nation of five million where most industrial plants stand idle and the external debt is the size of the economy.
Kyrgyzstan's economy depends heavily on the flagship venture with Canada's Cameco Corp. at the Kumtor gold field in the Tien Shan Mountains.
Kumtor gold alone accounts for around 40 percent of all Kyrgyz exports and the same share of its industrial output.
Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev said last month that Russia's RusAl, the world's third largest primary aluminum producer, planned to build an aluminum smelter with an annual capacity of 500,000 tons in the country's south.
RusAl is also expected to complete construction of two hydropower stations, started in Soviet times, to feed energy-heavy aluminum production. Tanayev said the deal with RusAl might be signed in June.
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