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EUR45 million loan to help complete key Croatian motorway
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will help complete the Corridor 10 motorway in Croatia to the border with Serbia with a €45 million loan to the state-owned Croatian Motorway Company (HAC). The road is a key corridor connecting Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia and Montenegro with the rest of Europe. The project will promote regional integration and improve a key transit route between the regions of continental Europe and markets in Greece and Turkey.
The loan, the Bank’s second to HAC, is part of a planned €90 million package, of which €45 million is expected to be provided by the European Investment Bank. It will help upgrade around 30 km of the final section of Corridor 10 in Croatia, from Zupanja to Lipovac, to motorway standard.
Gavin Anderson, EBRD Business Group Director for Infrastructure, said the project is important because a modern motorway network, integrating the Western Balkans and improving European links, will facilitate trade and hence the economic development of both Croatia and the region.
The project has been developed in close cooperation with the EIB. Mr Anderson said the two financial institutions look forward to collaborating again on future infrastructure and other projects in Croatia and neighbouring countries.
The EBRD has invested more than €3 billion in 94 transport projects in central and eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. The Bank signed its first deal in Croatia in 1994 and has since invested more than €1 billion in the country, including €320 million last year alone. All told, the EBRD has mobilised some €2 billion from its business partners for investment in Croatia, for projects ranging from agribusiness to transport and banking to telecommunications.
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