European investment bank lends to Greece for infrastructure
(ATHENS) - The European Investment Bank said on Thursday it had made its biggest-ever loan of two billion euros (2.4 billion dollars) to Greece for infrastructure in the country which is in the throes of massive structural reforms.
"We have just concluded a two-billion-euro loan with the ministers of finance and the economy," the bank's vice-president Plutarchos Sakellaris told reporters, adding: "This is the biggest EIB loan ever extended to Greece."
The loan will help Greece, struggling with a huge debt crisis, to fund nearly half its four-billion-euro share of proposed transport, renewable energy, waste management, research and other development projects overall worth 21.5 billion euros, he said.
The rest of the money will come from the European Union and other sources.
Half of the EIB loan, or one billion euros, has been earmarked to upgrade a railway from the southwestern port of Patras to the Bulgarian border and link it to the new container terminal of Neo Ikonio near the main port of Piraeus.
The bank will release a third of the sum at Greece's request, said Sakellaris who did not give a possible date or the loan interest rate.
"The interest rate will be determined at the time of the funds' release," he said, adding that the rate would be "good".
News reports put the rate at two to four percent.
Further fund releases will depend on project progress.
The Greek government is trying to promote development to allay public anger from a barrage of unpopular austerity cuts which have caused recurring strikes and street protests.
The Greek economy is caught in a deepening recession and is not expected to limp back to growth for at least another year.
The country is also saddled with a debt of nearly 300 billion euros and was only saved by a debt default in May by the first slice of a 110-billion-euro bailout loan from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.