Bosnia’s autonomous Serb Republic and two Chinese companies agreed on December 12, to form a joint venture to build a 350-MW coal-fired power plant that will ultimately replace the ageing 300 MW Gacko power plant in the southeast of the Balkan country.
The region’s energy minister and officials of the China Machinery Engineering Co. and Emerging Markets Power Fund signed a deal to form a joint venture that will be 51 percent owned by the Chinese parties with the rest held by the Serb Republic.
The Gacko 2 project is expected to cost more than 1 billion Bosnian marka ($588 million) and will be financed mainly by the Chinese, Energy Minister Petar Djokic said, adding that the investment would be the largest in the Bosnian Serb region since the end of the 1992-95 war.
Chinese companies have already built and helped to finance the 300-MW coal-fired Stanari plant in the north of the region.
Chinese investors are increasingly boosting their presence in the Balkans as the European Union, the World Bank and other institutions cut back on coal financing. In Bosnia alone they are considering energy and infrastructure projects worth more than €3 billion ($3.5 billion).