December 20 (SeeNews) - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and France's development agency AFD plan to provide a 150 million euro ($170 million) investment to back Serbia’s efforts to improve its waste management infrastructure, the EBRD said.
The investment, for which the EBRD and AFD are each extending a 75 million euro sovereign loan to Serbia, will finance the construction or extension of seven regional landfills and a multi-regional primary sorting system, the bank said in a statement on Friday.
In the first phase of the project, the new waste systems will serve 29 Serbian municipalities, with a total of over 900,000 residents, covering approximately 13% of the Serbian population, the EBRD said.
"We will implement the largest environmental projects in four local governments next year, namely four regional and recycling centres for solid waste management. Close to 30 cities and municipalities will gravitate towards those centres, and they will change the quality of life of their citizens," environmental protection minister Irena Vujovic noted.
The investment will help to reduce negative impacts related to waste production and management by reducing around 178,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions and increasing the amount of recycled waste by more than 19,000 tonnes per year, the EBRD said.
In addition to providing finance, the EBRD and AFD will support the environmental protection ministry and regional solid waste companies in preparing waste management plans. These plans will define waste management activities in each solid waste region financed by the investment, with objectives to increase waste collection, separation at source and recycling.
The EBRD is a leading institutional investor in Serbia and has invested more than 6.9 billion euro across 296 projects in the country to date. The bank is focusing on private-sector development, improving public utility services and the overall transition to a green economy.
($ = 0.88305 euro)