©Reuters. Spain was the third beneficiary of EIB financing in 2021, a record year
Brussels, Jan 27 (.).- Spain was the third country that received the most financing from the European Investment Bank in 2021 with a total of 12,770 million euros, in a year in which the public bank of the European Union broke a record of financing in its 63 years of life channeling 95,000 million euros, a third of them to fight against covid-19.
Only France, with 13.92 billion euros, and Italy, with 13.53 billion, obtained more funds from the group formed by the European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund, according to last year’s annual report published today.
In relation to its GDP, however, Portugal was the most benefited with the equivalent of 2.52% of its gross domestic product (3,520 million), while Spain was in tenth place with 1.07% of its GDP.
The EIB, whose shareholders are the States of the European Union, channeled a total of 95,000 million in financing in 2021, 27% more than the previous year, largely due to the guarantee fund of 24,400 million euros launched in 2020 to face the pandemic with guarantees provided by 22 countries.
Until the end of 2021, this mechanism approved investments worth 23.2 billion euros, almost 100% of what is available, with which the EIB calculates that it will also mobilize private investment to reach 174.4 billion in total financing to help companies weather the crisis.
The president of the EIB, Werner Hoyer, was shown in a press conference “very proud” of this result despite the fact that it falls short of the objective of mobilizing 200,000 million euros, something that he explained is due to the fact that not all the States participated and those that did, preferred not to bet on the high-risk investments that the EIB considered necessary to maximize the impact of the investment.
Hoyer stressed that this guarantee fund has “completely fulfilled” its function and urged to “replicate” this type of instrument in the future since, “at least some countries -he said- are not going to be able to finance additional investment only with their national budgets or generating more debt.
In Spain, this fund will channel 3,198 million euros in financing, the largest amount only behind Italy (4,021 million).
In total, with this and other instruments, the EIB allocated 33,260 million in 2021 to fight against covid-19, with investments, for example, in treatments or vaccines, including a loan of 45 million to the Spanish Hipra for the development of its vaccine or financing for the German BioNTech (NASDAQ:), which developed with Pfizer (NYSE:) the most widely used drug in Europe, as well as for exporting these to the rest of the world through the Covax initiative.
Apart from the pandemic, the EIB calculates that it allocated some 27.6 billion euros to support the ecological transition in the EU, some 20.7 billion euros to innovation – the highest figure in its history – and that some 45 billion euros of its investments served to support to small and medium enterprises, supporting 4.5 million jobs.
Another 8.1 billion euros were invested outside the EU by the EIB, which has just established a new branch focused on boosting community investments outside its territory. The chairman of the group called for promoting this activity as a means of promoting the EU’s strategic interests outside its borders.
(More information on the European Union at euroefe.euractiv.es)
