ALMATY (Reuters) -A consortium led by Turkey’s TAV Airports has raised $450 million in loans to finance upgrades at the airport of Almaty, Kazakhstan’s biggest city, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said.
The EBRD and the International Finance Corporation, an arm of the World Bank, have each contributed $150 million towards the project’s $780 million costs, the bank said on Monday.
The EBRD and IFC are also mobilising equal parallel loans totalling $150 million from the Eurasian Development Bank, German development finance institution DEG and other lenders.
TAV Airports took over the Almaty airport this year, saying it would double its capacity.
EBRD said the financing “will fund the biggest-ever private investment into airport infrastructure in Kazakhstan and Central Asia.”
“This will help boost operations of the busiest regional airport, which before the COVID-19 pandemic used to provide services to almost 7 million passengers per year and handle up to 220 flights per day,” it said.
(Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Louise Heavens and Edmund Blair)
