Kazakhstan, SKorea to sign agreements on projects worth $11 bln

ASTANA, August 25 (Itar-Tass) - Kazakhstan and South Korea will sign
agreements on implementing projects worth 11 billion US dollars, said on
Thursday Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev at a meeting with South
Korean President Lee Myung-bak.
"The sides plan today to sign many documents, including an agreement
on construction of a Balkhash heat and power station and a gas chemical
complex in Western Kazakhstan, which will put Korea among investment
leaders in our country," he emphasised.
The South Korean companies Samsung and Kepko won a tender for
construction of the station and signed a framework contract on this issue
with the Samruk-Energo Fund in March 2009.
The total cost of the project is assessed at 4.5 billion dollars with
a period of recoupment of 16-17 years.
An agreement on establishing a joint venture to implement the second
phase of the project of building a gas chemical complex in the Atyrauskaya
Region provides for building an enterprise whose capacity will be 1.2
million tonnes of polypropylene and polyethylene annually. The total
design cost of the project is 6.3 billion dollars. The first stage worth
1.3 billion dollars was funded by the Chinese Export-Import Bank.
Nazarbayev noted at the meeting with the Korean leader that the two
countries restored the pre-crisis volume of mutual trade, increasing it by
50 percent to nearly 800 million dollars in 2010.
It is also expected that an agreement will be signed on a
Korean-Kazakh technical cooperation centre during the visit by the South
Korean leader to Astana.
According to Nazarbayev, relations with South Korea "are now
characterized by strategic cooperation".