The European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Union’s long-term lending institution, has granted a EUR 150 million loan to Banco Santander Brasil for on-lending to private small and medium enterprises and midcap companies in Brazil.
EIB Vice-President Román Escolano and the CEO of Banco Santander Brasil, Jesús Zabalza, held a meeting today, where the EIB Vice-President stressed that “this operation is the first product of our collaboration with Santander Brasil in our efforts to support Brazilian small and medium sized enterprises. This collaboration will allow us to finance the activities of a larger number of private businesses”.
SMEs (firms with up to 250 employees) and midcaps (firms with up to 3 000 employees) will benefit from favourable interest rate and maturity terms and the funds may be used to finance new investment projects or working capital.
1 July 2014 saw the entry into effect of a new EU lending external mandate for the period 2014-2020 which sets a ceiling of nearly EUR 2.3 billion for operations in Latin America. The EIB is granting this loan under such mandate, which allows it to support investment aiming at promoting the local private sector, developing economic and social infrastructure and mitigating the effects of climate change.
Since launching its financing operations in Latin America in 1993, the EIB has provided finance of about EUR 7 billion for long-term investment projects in 13 countries in the region.