The Gazprom board in a press release yesterday confirmed that it would cut debts to 900 billion RUB. By the end of 2007, the company had 1,511 trillion RUB (42 billion EUR) of debts, newspaper Vedomosti reports.
However, it is unclear to what extent the downpayment will be real. Company officials indicate that Gazprom will only remove its debts from the Gazprombank, a bank controlled by the company. About 24 percent of the company debts are from Gazprombank, and a removal of the loans from here will not have much effect on the Gazprom debt situation, analysts conclude.
Gazprom last year had a net profit of 658 billion RUB (18,3 billion EUR).
