Russian President Vladimir Putin ratified the annex to the agreement concluded with Cairo on the terms of Egypt’s repayment of the loan to finance the Dabaa nuclear power plant project.

The Dabaa plant is being built by the Russian state-owned company Rosatom in Egypt, in Russian rubles.

On November 19, 2015, Egypt and Russia signed a cooperation agreement to establish the Dabaa nuclear power plant, with an investment cost of US$25 billion, provided by Russia as a soft government loan to Cairo.

The loan agreement with Egypt was concluded on that same day, and according to Russian Deputy Finance Minister Vladimir Kolychev the agreement was amended to switch to repayment in rubles on September 16, 2024, RT reported.

Kolychev said that due to the difficulty of repaying loans in unfavorable currencies, the two parties switched to settling debts in rubles and signed the necessary government protocol in September.

Egypt had fully repaid its debts until the beginning of 2024, he confirmed, adding that all loan installments were now being paid according to the approved schedule.

Dabaa is Egypt’s first nuclear power plant and is being built in the city of Dabaa in Marsa Matrouh Governorate on the Mediterranean coast, 300 km northwest of Cairo.

It will include four Generation 3+ pressurized water reactors with a total capacity of 4,800 megawatts, each with a capacity of 1,200 megawatts.

The first reactor is scheduled to launch in 2028.

Russian nuclear energy giant Rosatom is building the plant using state-of-the-art technology and according to the highest safety and security standards, as confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Rosatom has a long history of building dozens of nuclear power plants in Russia and around the world.