Siemens secures first funding for Egypt power plant project

CAIRO: Egypt has secured a first tranche of financing for an 8 billion euro ($8.5 billion) plan for power plants to be built by Germany’s Siemens, the company and electricity ministry said.
The deal, which calls for three combined-cycle power plants with a capacity of 4,800 megawatts each, plus 12 wind farms, was signed in June and marked the single-biggest order in Siemens’ history.
It is designed to boost Egypt’s electricity generation by 50 percent.
A group of banks has agreed to supply credit for the Beni Suef natural gas-fired combined cycle power plant, the first of the three planned plants, a spokesman for Munich-based Siemens said.
Two agreements, worth 2 billion euros in total, were signed by a consortium of banks led by Deutsche Bank, HSBC Germany and German government-owned development bank KfW, two sources familiar with the situation told Reuters.
The project is expected to start operation in 2016, with full production by April 2018.