The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has signed a long-awaited agreement to lend $32.7 million to the Far Eastern Shipping Company, Russia's largest commercial fleet in the Pacific, a bank spokeswoman said Monday.


Far Eastern Shipping won the loan because it "plays a key role in the development of trade in the Russian Far East" and is attractive to commercial investors, said Rebecca Hill, a press officer at the EBRD's London office.


The company had been counting on the EBRD loan to cover a large chunk of the $60 million bill for its purchase of three new Polish container ships now being built. The fleet plans to replace 20 and scrap 50 of its 177 ships, half of which are over 20 years old.


The EBRD made a similar $75 million loan last month to PRISCO Maritime Limited, an Isle of Man subsidiary of the Nakhodka-based Primorsk Shipping Company. That loan was to be used to finance the construction of four tankers in a United States shipyard.


The two loans mark the first time European investors have financed ships registered under the Russian flag, seen as a risk in the past because political instability could threaten investment, Hill said. The Far Eastern Shipping Company's ships will be registered in both Russia and Cyprus and fly both flags, she said.


Half the loan, which Far Eastern Shipping has guaranteed with some of its old vessels, has been syndicated to Christiana Bank, a Norwegian commercial bank with long experience in the shipping business. The EBRD did not reveal the terms of the loans.


Far Eastern Shipping, with a virtual monopoly on trade routes to Asia, has book assets of nearly $1 billion and made a net profit of more than $100 million in 1992. But company officials say the fleet needs to raise $70 million to $90 million in the next five years to remain competitive.