By the end of this year, the St Petersburg rail car manufacturer Vagonmash is to receive a loan of RUR1.8bn ($62.1mn, or €41.3mn) from Sberbank’s North-West Bank for a project to build Neva electric trains. The Neva cars will be a unique product on the Russian market comparable to the best products of the world’s leading electric train manufacturers. Vagonmash is going to allocate RUR1.2bn of its own funds for the RUR3bn project to develop new cars and build requisite production facilities. Construction of the plant, which is to produce 100 cars a year (160 with double-shift operation), is to be completed in mid-2011. Vagonmash manufactures a wide range of rail and metro cars and provides maintenance services. (USD1 = RUB29.0184)

• Source: FC-Novosti