MOSCOW, October 27 (RIA Novosti) - Vietnam is to invest $1.5 billion in the construction of an ammonia and nitrogen fertilizer plant in Kalmykia, a republic on Russia's Caspian coast, Kalmykia's President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov said on Monday.

The agreement on the fertilizer plant was signed on Monday in Moscow following talks between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Minh Triet.

Ilyumzhinov said construction would begin in 2009 and the facility would start rolling out products in the first half of 2013. The plant is expected to produce 850,000 metric tons of ammonia and 750,000 metric tons of nitrogen fertilizer annually, he said.

Ilyumzhinov said around 1 billion cubic meters of natural gas extracted from the Caspian Sea would be used for these purposes.

The plant will be built through a joint Russian-Vietnamese venture, which will function on a parity basis. The plant is expected to generate a profit of about $1 billion a year, Ilyumzhinov said.