December 10 (SeeNews) - Croatia will contribute 500,000 euro ($570,711) for the Economic Resilience Initiative (ERI) of the European Investment Bank (EIB) to support job creation and infrastructure investments in Bosnia and/or other Western Balkan countries, the lender said.
The EIB will provide an additional 6 billion euro of financing under ERI, expected to deliver 15 billion euro of new investments by 2020, the EIB said in a statement on Friday.
ERI supports countries in the EU’s Southern Neighborhood and Western Balkans to tackle migration and other challenges by stimulating investments in jobs creation and services like energy, transport, water, sanitation and education, the EIB said in a statement on Friday.
"EIB is happy with the positive response form the EU member states on our Economic Resilience Initiative. This is a true sign of European solidarity with our neighbours. With member state support, we will help increase resilience and tackle migration-related issues, strengthen people, economies and improve infrastructure in countries to prepare for future crises and shocks," EIB Vice President, Dario Scannapieco, said in the statement.
With the support from the EU Member States, the ERI offers additional concessional finance, enhanced support to the private sector and impact finance for the EU’s Southern Neighborhood and Western Balkans up to 2020. To date, Croatia, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Slovakia, the United Kingdom, Lithuania and Slovenia pledged together close to 130 million euro for ERI.
To date, EIB has approved 36 projects under ERI, representing financing of some 3.7 billion euro. A bit more than half of that went into private sector development. More than 3,000 loans are provided to smaller businesses and midcaps in target countries, helping them to sustain 160,000 jobs via small businesses and midcaps alone.
"Our contribution to the Economic Resilience Initiative is a clear signal of Croatia`s commitment to the faster development of the region and our readiness to work together in the European family and join resources with our European partners to help mitigate negative effects of the migrant crisis," Croatia's finance minister Zdravko Maric said.
($ = 0.876125 euro)