Romania aims to hold on to the controlling stake in a partnership to build two more reactors at its Cernovada nuclear power plant, Economy Minister Varujan Vosganian said Thursday.
"We have two billion euros (3.2 billion dollars) at our disposal from privatisations and we already have experience from building the first two reactors," Vosganian said.
The minister said the government would draw up the statutes for the partnership in the next two weeks, under which the state-owned power company Nuclearelectrica would hold on to a stake of 51 percent.
At the beginning of March, Bucharest said that six foreign companies — steel group Arcelor-Mittal, Czech utility CEZ, Electrabel of Belgium, Enel of Italy, Iberdrola of Spain and German power giant RWE — would participate in the partnership.
Originally, Nuclearelectrica was to have held a stake of 20 percent in the partnership with the other six dividing the other 80 percent between them.
The minister said the decision to raise Nuclearelectrica's stake came after a poll suggested that Romanians wanted the state to retain control of the project.
The current Cernovada power plant in the country's southeast currently has two reactors in operation and supplies around 17 percent of Romania's electricity needs.
Another two reactors are set to go into operation by 2014-2015, and Romania launched an international tender for their construction, the cost of which was estimated to be 2.2 billion euros.
