The state-owned National Electricity Company (NEC) "has picked BNP Paribas as a structuring bank to manage the funding to build the nuclear plant at Belene," BTA news agency cited Dimitrov as saying.

He added that BNP had been preferred to another French bank, but did not provide more details.

Last month, NEC shortlished Belgian utility Electrabel and German power giant RWE in a bid to help finance and run the 4.0-billion-euro (6.3-billion-dollar) plant by acquiring a 49-percent stake in the company to operate it.

Negotiations are now underway with both to pick the winner.

Bulgaria signed a contract in January with Russian company Atomstroyexport to revive the long-stalled project for the 2,000-megawatt nuclear facility on the Danube.

Construction work on the plant's two reactors is scheduled to begin in the middle of this year, with the first reactor expected to be operational by January 2014 and the second a year later.

The Belene project was launched in 1987 but halted a couple of years later following pressure from environmentalists.

Bulgaria renewed plans to build the facility in 2005 to compensate for an expected downturn in its energy exports after the closure in late 2006 of four out of six operational reactors at its single nuclear power plant at Kozloduy.

The country used to be one of the Balkans' main energy exporters, supplying some 7.8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity abroad in 2006, but agreed to close the reactors ahead of its entry into the European Union on January 1, 2007.

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