UPDATE 3-Austria's RZB gets 1.75 bln euros in state capital

(Adds Raiffeisen International comment)

VIENNA Jan 30 (Reuters) - Austria's Raiffeisen Zentralbank (RZB), owner of Raiffeisen International RIBH.VI, said on Friday it would get a state capital injection of 1.75 billion euros ($2.25 billion) to help it through the credit crisis.

RZB gained shareholder approval in November for a possible state infusion of up to 2 billion euros to allow it to raise participation capital, the form of non-voting capital used for peer Erste Bank's (ERST.VI) state capital injection in October.

Austria's centrist coalition government has set aside a total of 15 billion euros in a stability package to shore up its domestic banking sector.

RZB provides more than half of the funding for Raiffeisen International, emerging Europe's second-largest lender, which owns banks in countries including Russia, Ukraine and Romania. It said the capital injection would allow it to boost its capital ratio.

Raiffeisen International, which is not itself eligible to tap the Austrian government's 100 billion euro banking stability package because it does not have an Austrian banking licence, said the RZB's hike would benefit all subsidiaries of the parent firm.

"The move is not intended for refinancing purposes, but should nevertheless also improve the access that all of the RZB Group's subsidiaries have to means of refinancing," Raiffeisen International spokesperson Peter Klopf told Reuters in an email.

The spokesman said that Raiffeisen International will also benefit from RZB's decision, although it raises the majority of its refinancing needs through the deposits of local customers at its 15 network banks in central and eastern Europe.

Foreign-owned banks that dominate lending in the region have been lobbying increasingly for an European Union-wide approach to stabilise the emerging European banking sector and stop the global credit crunch from creeping deeper into the region.

On Jan. 23, the main owner of Raiffeisen International was quoted as saying that the next two years would be "very difficult" but that the bank would not abandon the region.

Raiffeisen's Hungarian unit is not considering aid from the country's state support package, Hungary CEO Peter Felcsuti said.

"If our owners had such thoughts, and they don't have such thoughts now, then we would turn to the Hungarian state but according to my best knowledge, at the moment they (the owners) are not considering this," Felcsuti told a news conference.

($1=.7783 Euro)

(Reporting by Mark Heinrich in Vienna, Krisztina Than in Budapest and Tsvetelia Ilieva in Sofia; Editing by Sharon Lindores)