Lara Tassan Zanin, EIB: “The Romanian market needs incentives to keep the focus on digital and green investments”

“We have been entrusted by the Romanian Government to manage 1.2 billion Euro of funds dedicated to the private sector and their PNRR. I know that there is not much knowledge still in the market. That’s very important to say that out of the 29 billion Euro of the PNRR, 4 billion Euro will be dedicated to the private sector. Out of this 4 billion, 1.2 billion will be managed by us.

We will be advising as European Investment Bank the Ministry of Investment in European Projects (MIPE) on how they will distribute the grounds for the SME digitalization component under PNRR which is also very important,” Lara Tassan Zanin, Head of the EIB Group Office in Romania said during Romania’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan Conference 2022 organized by The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“The EIB Group has the largest office of all in Romania, made up of experts supporting Romanian authorities to prepare and implement projects to speed up the funds and we hope also to speed up the PNRR resources.

So, 1.2 billion Euro will be equally split between private equity funds. We will be investing in private equity mainly dedicated to tech industry, to more growth type of funds and the calls are coming in these days. Of course, 400 million Euro of funds for the private equity domain of Romania will not be absorbed in a blink of an eye, we will do multiple calls, but the idea is to support more specific tech funds, private equity funds in Romania with the PNRR resources. The manager in this case is the European Investment Fund, and all the calls for the Romanian money to be attributed to the funds will be distributed through open calls which will start in these days and will continue until the first part of the PNRR.

One of the very important and difficult aspect of PNRR is the short time of implementation. Particularly when we want to support tech, green, digital projects, is not very easy to find the projects that are ready to be financed today for them to be implemented by 2026. This is a very important condition, not always clear in the public opinion.

We have already signed the funding agreement with MIPE for the 400 million Euro funds. There is progress going on and the calls are coming this month and will continue throughout the period.

We have also signed with MIPE another funding agreement for 300 million Euro to support large caps and mid caps to to finance digital and green projects mostly. Again the challegens are huge because of the implementation time particularly in the case of green investments.

The Romanian market, both public and private, needs and incentive to keep the focus on pursuing digital and green investments. Companies still need to be advised on what kind of investments and how to prepare them. We will be offering this advisory through our PNRR support.”

Full recording of the conference here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5f1JNCEe-I&t=5504s