MOSCOW, Jan 15 (Reuters) - The main shareholder in Russian off-road vehicle firm UAZ will use a $51 million share issue this year to build a new production and assembly plant with a foreign partner, Vedemosti newspaper reported on Thursday.
Vadim Shvetsov, general director of majority shareholder Severstal-Avto, said his company would propose the 7.7 million Severstal-Avto share issue to shareholders at an extraordinary meeting on February 27, the business daily wrote.
Severstal-Avto is 80 percent owned by the owners of Russian steel giant Severstal .
Shvetsov said the receipts would fund a new, 50,000 vehicle plant, but declined to name the partner whose vehicles UAZ would assemble there alongside its own UAZ-3163 model, Vedemosti said.
UAZ produced 70,000 vehicles in 2003.
The firm said it had independently valued the issue at 1.47 billion roubles ($50.94 million).
Severstal-Avto will place the issue, which will boost the company's share capital by 35 percent, by the end of the year. The partner's name will be released in spring, Shvetsov said. ($1=28.86 Rouble)