EIB Will Help Slovenia With Favourable Ice-Storm Loans
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The bank is willing to provide the funds immediately, because "time is of the essence", said Hoyer, who did not discuss details, saying only that they were "talking about a three digit number of million euros".
"We are ready to talk to the government about further loans because it is quite obvious that in the economically difficult situation, the repairs of the [power] transmission lines....and other parts of the energy infrastructure need to be done with resolve and quickly. And we are ready to be part of that exercise."
The loans from the EIB are to be taken out by the Slovenian state-owned SID export and development bank. Hoyer said that the EIB's cooperation with SID was very intensive and believes they will be able to speed up the process.
In terms of loan conditions, State Secretary at the Slovenian Agriculture and Environment Ministry Tanja StrniĊĦa mentioned on Monday the possibility of long-term loans with maturity of 20 years or more.
Hoyer did not discuss the conditions, interest rates or other details, but said that EIB loans were definitely cheaper than loans from commercial banks.
"The EIB is able to borrow on international capital markets at very favourable rates and we forward these financial advantages to our final recipients."
"So, I'm sure that the consumer, the household, or a small enterprise - whoever needs a credit - will be offered loans by their local banks which will be much more favourable then without the participation of EIB," said Hoyer.
The bank loaned a total of EUR 480m to Slovenia in 2013 for five projects, which accounts for 0.7% of all loans given out by the EIB last year. The figure is lower than that in 2012, when Slovenia got EUR 620m.
Most of the money provided to Slovenia by the EIB last year, EUR 300m, was used in a SID project providing favourable loans to small- and medium-sized companies.