Russian Communications Minister Vladimir Bulgak says that final details about financing its telephone modernisation still need to be worked out but that the project has entered the final phase, Reuter reports from Bonn, where Bulgak was holding talks with German postal minister Wolfgang Boetsch and the chairman of Deutsche Bundespost Telekom, Helmut Ricke; Belgak said he was still talking with western phone companies about the size of their stakes in a joint venture to be set up to carry out the enormous telephone system modernisation; of the total project costs, estimated at $40,000m, 38% would be raised by western investors, Russia will finance around 50% of the cable and equipment costs through the sale of telephone concessions, and around 20% of the installation costs will be financed by Russian partners.
