State-owned Kuwait Petroleum International (KPI) will receive funding from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to build and develop Vietnam's second oil refinery, its chairman was reported as saying.

Hussein Ismail told Kuwait's state news agency Kuna that building the 200,000-bpd Nghi Son oil refinery is part of Kuwait's strategy to invest in large-scale refining and petrochemicals projects in East Asia.

No figure was given for the funding.

The refinery, situated in the northern province of Thanh Hoa, 215 km south of Hanoi, is a joint venture between KPI, Petrovietnam Construction Corp and Japan's Idemitsu Kosan Company and Mitsui Chemicals.

The project is expected to be completed and ready for operation in 2015, Kuna said.

KPI, an international unit of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), established the joint venture in April 2008 to build the refinery, which is designed to process Kuwaiti crude.

Investment in the refinery would total $7.5 billion, Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said in January.-Reuters