Eyeing uranium supply, India to back Kazakh bid for WTO

State-owned Nuclear Power Corporation and Kazakh national atomic

firm Kazatomprom are working on a uranium supply deal that may
eventually see
India’s sole N-power firm set up its first overseas plant in joint venture in Central Asia’s fastest-growing economy.

A team of Kazatomprom executives is coming to India for advanced negotiations. The two sides will try and sew up talks so that a deal may be signed when Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev visits India as the Republic Day chief guest. The talks will first focus on getting nuclear supplies from Kazakhstan and could later move to setting up reactors in joint venture.
A nuclear deal will widen the scope of energy ties that the two countries have been trying to establish. Such a tie-up will also help in trade with Kazakhstan, which is the gateway to the vast Russian-speaking market spanning Central Asia and Russia. The two have been discussing a stake to India’s ONGC Videsh in Kazakhstan’s Satpayev exploration acreage. India will be the fourth country after Russia, China and Japan with which Kazakhstan will be signing a strategic nuclear partnership.

Times of India