German electronics giant Robert Bosch GmbH is close to starting production of automotive fuel-injection components in Russia to tap the country's growing auto market, the company announced.


Bosch is in the final stage of setting up a joint venture in cooperation with three Russian partners in the city of Saratov, 800 kilometers southeast of Moscow, said Martina Horton, Bosch's public relations coordinator, in a telephone interview from Stuttgart on Friday.


A letter of intent was signed in June, according to which Bosch will hold 60 percent in the new company Bosch-SEPO, with the rest of shares split among SEPO, a producer of aviation equipment, auto-equipment maker Avangard and automaking giant AvtoVAZ, Horton said.


The new plant is planned to open in 1997 on the premises of SEPO. It will supply auto parts to AvtoVAZ and also to carmaker GAZ.


The Bosch project in Saratov will cost 81 million Deutsche marks ($57.5 million), Commersant Daily reported last week. Horton said Bosch "cannot confirm the figure yet."


Bosch also switched over two digital telephone exchanges Friday in the towns of Obninsk and Tarusa in the Kaluga region, about 200 kilometers south of Moscow.


Bosch is to install five to six telephone exchanges, worth 2 million marks each, in the Kaluga region as a part of a five-year Bosch-Elektrosvyaz project to bring the region's communications up to international standards, said Nikolai Galevko, technical director of Elektrosvyaz.


Kaluga residents previously had to place an overseas call through an operator. The region is notorious for its poor telephone service.


Elektrosvyaz and Bosch plan to install about 160,000 more exchange lines in the Kaluga region by the year 2002, Galevko said.