Financiarul

Of all the states submitting projects as part of the Jaspers programme, Romania did best, as 22 of the 54 projects approved were Romanian, Matthias Kollatz Ahnen, vice-president of the European Investment Bank (EIB), on Thursday, in Bucharest, told a news conference devoted to the presentation of the EIB activity.

The shortage of money from the budget can be counteracted by accessing structural funds, in which the grant ranges from 70 percent to 85 percent, and the EIB is one of the institutions to have products meant to cover confinancing. The EIB is not interested to know whether the project comes from the Government, from the local administration or from the corporate area, it is concerned with the quality of the project, said the EIB vice-president.

The EIB operations in Romania cover three important sectors, namely supporting convergence, supporting the SMEs and counteracting climate changes. The loans granted by the EIB to Romania in 2009 amounted to the record level of 1.48 billion euros and the loans given from 1990 till now total 7.7 billion euros.
The involvement of the EIB in combating the effects of the global crisis is reflected by the increase in the value of the loans given to Romania, from 1.1 billion euros in 2008 to 1.5 billion euros in 2009, everybody knowing that it is difficult to get funds during a crisis, said Matthias Kollatz Ahnen.

The EIB works with eight partner banks in Romania and gave substantial support to industry in 2009. Thus, 400 million euros went to the Ford Plant in Craiova (southern Romania), 50 million euros were allocated to a factory owned by the Pirelli company in Slatina (southern Romania), another 40 million euros went to Lehliu (southern Romania) for building and exploiting an oil pressing and making installation.
Another sum of 351 million euros was allocated through the eight partner banks to supporting the SMEs in such fields as industry, services, energy efficiency and environment protection, added Matthias Kollatz Ahnen.

Projects in the field of the knowledge based society (research and design in computers and some testing technologies) got 15 million euros as funding and 25.3 million euros were allocated for environment protection. The EIB signed a 200 million euro contract on designing and making equipment, building and exploiting some energy producing units near Ploiesti (southern Romania).

The European Investment Bank increased its total volume of loans in 2009 to 79 billion euros, which means a 37 percent increase from the previous year (58 billion euros). The loans given by the EIB in 2009 mostly went to convergence projects (29 billion euros, which is a 36 percent increase from 2008), to projects meant to combat the effects of the climate changes (17 billion euros) and to promote the SMEs (13 billion euros).