North Macedonia’s electricity producer ESM said on Monday it signed contracts with Germany's KfW and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) for loans worth a total of 97 million euro ($114 million) for the development of the Bitola 3 solar power plant and the revitalisation of state-owned hydropower plants.
Of the total amount, 87 million euro will be allocated to ESM for the Bitola 3 solar plant, including 50 million euro from KfW and 37 million euro from the EBRD, ESM said in a Facebook post.
The project entails the construction of a 134 MW solar power plant on the site of the exhausted Bitola coal mine, the EBRD said in an earlier statement.
An additional 10 million euro from KfW will be directed toward the implementation of the third phase of the revitalisation of state-owned hydropower plants. The total value of the project is 47.3 million euro, including a 10 million euro grant from the European Union, ESM said.
The implementation of the project will increase domestic electricity production by an additional 50 GWh per year.
The loans will be guaranteed by the government of North Macedonia.
ESM, fully owned by North Macedonia's government, provides most of the domestic electricity production.
(SeeNews, December 22, 2025)
