To help support economic growth and the recovery of employment throughout the European Union, the European Investment Bank has launched a strategy for the three-year period 2013-2015 which envisages a significant strengthening of financing activities, the volume of which in the three years it will grow by about 60 billion, a figure that will feed up to 180 billion of investments. With the consequence that the total annual loans guaranteed by the EIB will settle at around 65-70 billion euros, a substantial portion of which (about 9 billion) will be destined, through 28 local banks, to cover the requests made by subjects Italians.
This was stated in Rome, with a particular emphasis reserved for Italy, by Dario Scannapieco - EIB vice president as well as president of the EIF, the European Investment Fund, a subsidiary created by the Bank itself to specifically finance small and medium-sized enterprises - in a meeting with the press to illustrate the EIB group's activities in 2012 and the programs and objectives for the three-year period that has just begun.
“A response of exceptional dimensions and modalities to an exceptional situation such as the economic and financial crisis that the European Union is continuing to suffer”, EIB President Werner Hoyer had just said in Brussels. An answer, explained Scannapieco, inspired by four priorities, each of which will be allocated more or less a quarter of those 60 billion of additional resources over the three-year period.
The first priority is directed towards innovation and skills, and therefore research and development, training and education. The second aims to facilitate easier access to credit for small and medium-sized enterprises. "A choice that could lead to the creation of jobs, considering that traditionally it is SMEs that provide the most important contribution to new employment", underlined the vice president Scannapieco. He added that in 2012 the EIB completed loans for over two and a half billion with its 28 partner banks in Italy for small and medium-sized enterprises. And that in the last five years, EIB interventions have reached 62.000 Italian SMEs, for a total of 12,5 billion.
The third priority, which will be assigned a higher share of resources (20 billion over the three-year period) than that for the other three, concerns energy efficiency; with a particular emphasis on investments to tackle climate change (“The EIB is a green bank”, said Scannapieco). The fourth is aimed at energy infrastructure to strengthen the internal market and support convergence between EU Member States and regions. “In this field, the EIB has remained one of the very few institutions that lend in the medium-long term and has a bad debt level of just 0,3% of capital. On the other hand, with triple A ratings from the major rating agencies, the EIB remains the largest issuer of bonds: last year it issued bonds for 71 billion euros”, the vice president also said.
Established in 1958 as a result of the Treaties of Rome which established the European Communities, the European Investment Bank has a deep-rooted privileged relationship with our country which, with a total of 160 billion in loans from that year to today, of which 6,8, 2012 billion in 15 (equal to 9% of the total loans granted in the year) remains the main beneficiary of the EIB intervention. Which over the course of the three-year period that has just begun will make the additional 90 billion a year indicated above converge on Italy. “Resources that will allow the activation, again in the three-year period, of investments for around XNUMX billion lire”, specified Scannapieco.
As regards the activity of the EIF (whose capital is held 60% by the EIB, 30% by the European Commission and the remaining 10% is divided among numerous institutional investors), activity aimed specifically at strengthening the capital of SMEs, Scannapieco recalled that last year 53 million euros were invested in Italy in three private equity operations as a result of which a further 285 million were mobilized. And finally that, after the collaboration agreement signed in 2011 with the Italian guarantee fund, last year the EIF made investments in 7 funds in Italy for a total of 345 million.
