Tunisia: EIB signs its first post-Deauville loan: EUR 163 million for economic development, employment and road upgrading

Philippe de Fontaine Vive, Vice-President of the European Investment Bank (EIB) and Abdelhamid Triki, Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, today signed a EUR 163m (TND 325m) contract to support economic development, employment and road upgrading in Tunisia.

This major project, which will directly benefit the people of Tunisia, centres on:

• The rehabilitation and upgrading of the road network throughout Tunisia, including the surfacing of rural roads in the country’s interior;
• The economic development of Tunisia’s disadvantaged regions, helping to open them up;
• Support for the business of public works enterprises, safeguarding and creating thousands of jobs throughout the country;
• The improvement of road safety by upgrading infrastructure in line with safety requirements and dealing with accident black spots.

This signature is particularly important for a number of reasons: the size of the loan (EUR 163m, or TND 325m) sends a signal of confidence in the democratic transition; and the operation also demonstrates the ability of the EIB, as the leading investor in the Mediterranean region, to take swift, practical and effective action, by mobilising its technical and financial know-how, to help Tunisia with its process of democratic, economic and social transition and to improve the daily living conditions of the Tunisian people. EIB Vice-President Philippe de Fontaine Vive described this undertaking in these terms: “This first post-Deauville loan is highly symbolic. It embodies our commitment to helping the people of Tunisia. Our task is to provide the younger generation with new hopes for the future.  Training, jobs, security and the modernisation of the country’s infrastructure are key to the Tunisia’s economic and social development”.

This first financing operation represents a concrete EIB response to the aspirations voiced in the Arab spring. It comes in the wake of the European and international mobilisation at the G8 summit in Deauville and the EIB’s reaffirmed commitment to helping the Mediterranean countries in transition by: providing increased support for projects that create jobs, the number one priority in these countries faced with high unemployment; fostering an entrepreneurial culture by supporting small businesses and encouraging research, development and innovation; and assisting economic and social integration with the aim achieving balanced development focusing particularly on isolated regions with no infrastructure or effective means of communication.

Other concrete EIB operations will follow this signature, in accordance with the undertakings made by the EIB on 3 March 2011, centring on support for SMEs, the development of microcredit, jobs and industry (with a new loan for a chemicals group).

After Tunis, the next post-Deauville gathering will be in Brussels on 12 July, in the form of the annual FEMIP meeting of European and Mediterranean Finance Ministers, whose programme will include an examination of the EIB’s strategy and specific action in the Mediterranean to date and going forward to 2013. At this meeting, the EIB and Tunisia will propose holding a regional conference in Tunis on the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Attachment: map of road improvement schemes in Tunisia

Note to editors:

The EIB, the leading financial investor in the Mediterranean

The European Investment Bank (EIB) is the European Union’s financial institution and the leading financial investor in the Mediterranean through FEMIP (the Facility for Euro-Mediterranean Investment and Partnership), which provides practical support for economic and social development in the Mediterranean with the aim of improving people’s living conditions.

Since FEMIP was created in 2002, the EIB has been constantly increasing the quality and diversity of its action in the Mediterranean region, playing a role as a financial catalyst by attracting other investors in its wake. Since 2002 it has mobilised investment worth more than EUR 12.6bn (TND 25.2bn) in support of these countries. 

By increasing its business volume to a record EUR 2.6bn (TND 3.2bn) in 2010 – a 60% rise on 2009 – FEMIP once again demonstrated to its Mediterranean partners its ability to support the drive to modernise their economies and reaffirmed its position as the leading financial investor in the Mediterranean.