The People’s Bank of China and China Eximbank are ready to provide up to $3 billion to finance the Chinese-Belarusian Industrial Park, Deputy Prime Minister Anatol Tozik told reporters in Minsk on Tuesday following the 13th meeting of the Belarusian-Chinese Commission for Trade and Economic Cooperation.
Ten Chinese and other large companies have already filed applications to establish businesses in the Park, said Tozik, co-chairman of the commission.
Specific construction work to build facilities in the area is to begin in the spring of 2013, he noted.
An agreement on the establishment of the Chinese-Belarusian Industrial Park was signed in Minsk in September 2011 and ratified by the Belarusian parliament in December.
Under Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s edict, the park is to occupy a total area of 8,048 hectares (19,890 acres) in the Smalyavichy district near Minsk and have the status of a “special economic zone” where resident companies will be granted special treatment for 50 years for the purpose of “securing comfortable conditions of doing business and investment attractiveness.”
Residence in the Park will be limited to Belarusian-registered legal entities that would specialize in electronics, fine chemistry, biotechnologies, machine-building and the development of new materials. Each company will be required at to invest at least $5 million.
“Strategic investors” will be granted the same concessions as companies in Belarus’ Free Economic Zones, High-Technology Park and small and medium-sized cities.
Lukashenka said in December 2011 that Chinese companies would invest dozens of billions of dollars in the Park, whose scale he said was unprecedented even for China.
“The most state-of-the-art enterprises will be started,” he said. “Companies from all over the world will be involved.”
Industrial Park Development Company (IPDC) was founded in August to build and manage the Park’s facilities. The founders include China's CAMC Engineering Co., Ltd. (CAMCE), which owns 60 percent of the company, and the Minsk Regional Executive Committee and Minsk-based television manufacturer Horizont, which hold 30 and 10 percent, respectively.
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