BANJA LUKA (Bosnia and Herzegovina), February 11 (SeeNews) – China’s Tianjin Electric Power Construction Company is interested in expanding cooperation with Bosnia’s Serb Republic by investing around 1 billion marka ($578 million/511 million euro) in various energy projects, the entity’s government in Banja Luka said.
Tianjin, which already works on the construction of Bosnia's Stanari thermal power plant (TPP) as a partner of the EFT Group, is ready for the implementation of new projects, particularly in the power energy sector, the government of the Serb Republic said in a statement on Tuesday after the energy minister Petar Djokic met the company’s officials.
Tianjin proposed the build-operate-transfer (BOT) and turnkey business models for cooperation that will be financed possibly through the China’s Ex-Im Bank, said the statement.
The Bosnian unit of UK-based energy firm EFT was awarded a concession to develop the 300 MW Stanari project in 2008. Construction works on the power station, located near the Stanari lignite mine, began in 2012. The commercial operation is scheduled for the second half of 2016. The plant's annual output of electricity is seen at 2 million megawatt-hours.
The Serb Republic is one of the two entities that make up Bosnia and Herzegovina. The other is the Muslim-Croat Federation.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bosnian marka)