BEIJING, Dec. 15 -- China's CSR Corp Ltd, one of the country's two leading rolling stock manufacturers, has secured a contract worth 1.7 billion yuan (278 million U.S. dollars) to supply locomotives and rail cars to Argentina, CSR said Monday in an online statement.

CSR's locomotives and trains will be used on Argentina's Belgrano Cargo Railway Rehabilitation Project, in which China Machinery Engineering Corp, a state-owned international engineering and trade company, is the main contractor.

The contract included 80 locomotives and more than 2,000 freight rail cars, CSR said in the statement.

CSR said it has become an important supplier of locomotives and rail cars to the South American country. Supply services began as early as 2006.

Last year, CSR had won two contracts from Argentina to supply a total of 709 rail passenger carriages to make electric multiple unit (EMU) train formations, a deal worth more than 1 billion U.S. dollars.

The first batch of six CSR-made EMUs consisting of 54 carriages went into operation in July this year on railways linking the capital Buenos Aires to satellite cities, the company said.

Also on Monday, CSR said in another statement that one of its subsidiaries, CSR Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Co. Ltd, had won a maintenance, repair and overhaul contract worth about 400 million yuan from Malaysia's Transport Ministry for six-car set trains owned by Malaysia's national railway network.