Gazprom’s Headquarters host a Board of Directors’ meeting. The Board of Directors approved the Company’s Long-Term Borrowing Principles up to 2013.

Abiding by the Principles should provide stable financing of the Gazprom Group’s production activities for the period up to 2013, to ensure reduced debt-servicing costs and minimization of the Company’s total indebtedness.

Gazprom will carry out a range of measures targeted at:

• Maintaining Gazprom’s current asset liquidity
• Minimizing export proceeds provided as collateral for loans
• Diversifying loan instruments and expanding available segments of the financial market
• Cutting the debt attraction and servicing costs
• Improving the corporate governance quality
• Establishing prerequisites to enhance the Company’s credit rating
• Implementing large-scale investment projects (based on the project financing principles) jointly with Gazprom’s strategic partners

The Document stresses that on optimizing its borrowed fund structure in 2003-2004, Gazprom has received an opportunity to mostly complete the debt portfolio restructuring, to finally reject the promissory note issue as a loan instrument and to minimize its short-term borrowings to a required level (less than 25%).

The Principles envisage that the amount of borrowings for the period concerned shouldn’t exceed the 2004 target of RUR 150 billion. Given the favorable gas pricing growth and main currency rates as well as the propitious market conditions, the loan volumes may drop down to USD 2-4 billion per year. At the same time, total expenditures to be incurred for undertaking debt servicing are forecasted to equal the amount not exceeding relevant expenses targeted for 2004 (RUR 166.2 billion).

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