Biggest ever EIB loan in Slovenia: EUR 500 million for co-financing with EU Funds

28-12-2012 — /europawire.eu/ — The European Investment Bank (EIB) is lending EUR 500 million to the Slovenian Government to facilitate the implementation of the Slovenian National Strategic Reference Framework. This is the biggest EIB loan ever granted in Slovenia. In general, the loan will serve to co-finance projects which benefit from the EU Structural and Cohesion Funds.

Mr Anton Rop, EIB Vice-President, commented: “This EIB loan, the biggest ever provided in Slovenia, will help both to strengthen the competitiveness of Slovenia and increase its absorption capacity of EU funds. It makes available resources, granted on favourable terms, to finance Slovenia’s contribution to implementing priority projects amounting to some EUR 3 billion that receive support from these funds”.

Mr Janez Šušteršič, Minister of Finance of Slovenia stressed: ‘’Slovenia has until recently been undertaking a relatively uniform funding strategy for the state budget focusing on 1 or 2 benchmark issues of EUR-denominated bonds. Tapping into EIB capacity diversifies our funding availabilities. The EIB as an EU institution provides a natural match for our EU co-financed operations and given our commitment to budgetary consolidation, we will be deploying the funds to finance the much needed investments since the use of EU funds and projects co-financed from the EU Structural and Cohesions Funds are becoming ever more prominent.’’

The majority of the projects envisaged to be supported will be undertakings in the transport sector and the areas of research, technological development and innovation, followed by the waste, water and environmental protection sectors; education; improvement of training and access to employment; energy; health and urban development.

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Dušan Ondrejička
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