March 17 (SeeNews) - The UK's export credit agency will guarantee a 2.1 billion euro ($2.3 billion) loan to help finance the construction of a 503 km high-speed electric railway line in Turkey that will connect the capital of Ankara to the port city of Izmir, the UK government said on Thursday.
The deal will secure major contracts for UK-based and Turkish companies of all sizes, with several nine-figure deals for UK firms close to being agreed, the UK government said in a statement.
The railway line will provide a faster, lower-carbon alternative to current air and road routes between Ankara and Izmir, helping to fulfil Turkey’s climate change commitments made at the UN Climate Change Conference held at the end of 2021 in Glasgow.
The green financing will be guaranteed by UK Export Finance (UKEF), through its Buyer Credit Scheme, with Switzerland's Credit Suisse and UK's Standard Chartered structuring and coordinating banks arranging the transaction, the agency said in a statement.
Turkey is one of the UK’s most important independent trading partners. The bilateral trading relationship was worth £17.5 billion (20.7 billion euro) in the four quarters to the end of the third quarter of 2021, increasing by £1.4 billion compared to the same period in 2020, according to the statement.
($ = 0.90225 euro)