OREANDA-NEWS. On 26 May 2009 was announced, that Nikita Belykh, the Governor of Kirov Region and Mikhail Slobodin, the President of IES-Holding signed the Agreement on social and economic cooperation and power complex development of the region.

The Agreement defines basic principles and directions of further cooperation of IES-Holding and Kirov Region Government within the investment and production-and-technical cooperation, as well as tariff, environment and social policies and introduction of power efficient technologies.

Particularly, the sides intend to extend the program of peat sector and stimulate the transfer of unprofitable oil-fired boiler-houses to peat, the local type of fuel. Within the investment cooperation IES-Holding will proceed to implement the projects related to construction of combined-cycle units at Kirovskaya CHPP-3 and large-scale reconstruction of boiler-houses equipment at Kirovskaya CHPP-4 involving a power efficient low temperature vortex technology.

In order to set the conditions for brining in the investments into power sector development it is planned to conserve the practice of establishing long-term tariffs and introduce double-rate tariffs for heat energy that will provide more comfortable conditions for the consumers.

As for the social policy the sides agreed on development and implementation of joint programs on personnel training for power enterprises and development of children and junior sport activities.

According to Mikhail Slobodin the IES-Holding President, this agreement indicates the power holding’s and regional government’s interest in development of mutually beneficial long-term relations.

Nikita Belykh the Regional Governor noted that signing of the agreement was an important step for both peat industry and power sector development. “The Agreement underlines that our efforts are aimed at development of the region”, the Head of the Region emphasized.

The cooperation of Kirov Region Government and IES-Holding will be built on the basis of agreed yearly schedules and plans of specific arrangements implementation.