EIB offers 98 mln euro guarantees to Romanian banks under RRF

The guarantees will allow Banca Comerciala Romana (BCR), Raiffeisen Bank Romania, and UniCredit Bank Romania to offer more favourable loan terms, triggering up to 750 million euro in new lending to support investments in climate action and digital transformation by local large enterprises, mid-caps, and small municipalities, the EIB said in a press release following a visit by EIB vice-president Ioannis Tsakiris to Bucharest.

"We are working very closely with EIB on priorities such as infrastructure, jobs and skills, health and the green transition [...] I would like to offer a reminder of the €1.4 billion sum that was already signed with EIB for safer road transport, including €1.2 billion for the A7 motorway and €200 million for the A3 motorway," Romania's finance minister Marcel Bolos said.

In a separate statement, the local unit of Raiffeisen Bank said that the guarantees provided by the EIB will allow it to mobilize 250 million euro to finance medium-to-large investment projects, especially in the fields of climate action and digitalisation.

On June 25, the EIB said that it was lending 35.4 million euro to the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Romania's northeastern city of Iasi to support the refurbishing and upgrade of its campus buildings, marking the EIB's first operation under its 200 million euro initiative to support higher education in the country.

The EIB started its collaboration with Romania in 1991 and has since committed more than 19 billion euro in financing for 193 projects in the country. In the first half of 2024, EIB financing in Romania has surpassed €754 million for operations carried out by the public, corporate, and banking sectors in the fields of transport, education, energy, and small and medium-sized enterprises.

($ = 0.9347 euro)