The European Investment Bank (EIB) has approved a EUR 300 million loan to the Asturias Region for taking forward a series of investments over the four-year period 2009-2012. The President of the Region, Vicente Álvarez Areces, and EIB Vice-President Carlos da Silva Costa signed the finance contract in Luxembourg this evening.

Closing the signing ceremony, the EIB Vice-President stressed the “importance of public investment in this difficult economic climate, inasmuch as it helps to strengthen competitiveness in the long term and create jobs in the short term through investment in a wide range of economic sectors such as health and education, culture, urban regeneration, sustainable mobility, research and innovation and the sustainable use of natural resources. I also think it is important to underline the 20-year term of this loan, which will enable the Asturias Region to undertake long-term investment, with the undoubted benefits that this brings”.

The loan will support the implementation of Asturias’s 2009-2012 Investment Programme. The project will foster economic growth, job creation and competitiveness in the region through investments promoting health and education, culture, urban regeneration, sustainable mobility, research and innovation and the environmentally sustainable use of natural resources. It comprises small and medium-scale schemes located in Asturias in the areas of health, education, social inclusion, culture and cultural heritage, administration, sustainable transport, information and communications technologies (ICT), research, development and innovation (RDI) and the environment.

The investments promoted by the Region’s executive will complement the 2007-2013 Operational Programme for Asturias approved by the European Commission in 2007. The EIB will be cofinancing certain schemes under the programme with the EU structural funds.

The EIB is the EU’s long-term financing institution promoting European objectives. Created in 1958, it operates in the 27 EU Member States and more than 130 countries worldwide. EIB financing operations are mounted in the framework of well defined EU policies.