EIB lent €1.9 bn last year, mostly for innovation; €44.5bn over 42 years
EIB has been working with Portugal since 1976, and since then it has lent over €44.5bn. Last year, for investments in the field of innovation, the European Investment bank lent €1.9bn to our country.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) has lent some €44.5 billion for 457 projects in Portugal over the last 42 years, with €1.9 billion being lent just last year, the institution announced on Tuesday.
According to data unveiled by the EIB at a news conference in Brussels, most of the latter amount – €904.2 million – was earmarked for initiatives in the field of innovation, followed by infrastructure (€502.5 million) and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs – €499 million). Environmental projects were also financed to the tune of €73.2 million.
The EIB has, it stressed in a statement, been working with Portugal since 1976.
“We have been enabling the modernisation of the country’s infrastructures [and] improved the access of SMEs to the financing of selected local banks,” it said. Among industrial companies it had helped, it cited Navigator, Portugal’s largest maker of fine paper, which it had provided with finance to boost output and energy efficiency at its Figueira da Foz pulp mill.”
In 2018, the year the EIB turned 60, the institution lent more than €64 billion for investments totalling €230 billion in Europe and around the world. Among areas with the most projects are digitalisation, SMEs, education and skills, sustainable energy and the modernisation of infrastructure, which EIB chairman Werner Hoyer said were crucial for the European economy to keep up with world competition.
