February 4 (SeeNews) - The European Investment Bank Group, consisting of the European Investment Bank (EIB) and European Investment Fund (EIF), invested a record-high 257.2 million euro ($291.3 million) in Slovenia in 2021, it said.
The EIB lent 80 million euro in two operations, and the EIF provided 177.2 million euro in guarantees covering loans for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), mid-caps and municipalities in three separate operations in Slovenia last year, the EIB Group said in a statement on Thursday.
"The EIB Group proved to be a reliable partner of Slovenia even in the most difficult of times, and together with our partners in the country such as the government of Slovenia, SID Banka and SRDF, commercial banks like UniCredit we ensured Slovenia can continue to work, grow, and develop faster, greener, and sustainably," EIB Vice-President Lilyana Pavlova said.
EIB's 50 million euro lending to SID Banka's municipal infrastructure investment programme and 30 million euro to the Slovenian Regional Development Fund's (SRDF) SME, mid-cap and municipal COVID-19 recovery programme increased total EIB investments in the country to 3.02 billion euro for the last ten years, the EIB Group noted.
”During the pandemic, we adopted measures to help the people and the economy. The measures were aimed at preserving jobs and maintaining functioning of the economy. The measures were successful. It is important that during this time, we also showed solidarity at the EU level and adopted the Recovery and Resilience Facility,” Slovenia's finance minister Andrej Sircelj said in the statement.
Since the beginning of its lending operations in Slovenia in 1977, the EIB has invested 7.29 billion euro across key economic sectors of national economy, including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), transport, energy and infrastructure.
($ = 0.8829 euro)
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