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World Bank launched Romania's Country Partnership Strategy for 2014-2017
The World Bank's Country Partnership Strategy for Romania for the period 2014-2017, based on which Romania is provided with a series of four development policy loans (DPL) was launched on Wednesday in Bucharest.
The World Bank (WB) has already approved a first loan worth 750 million euros, supporting critical reform measures to step up public finance and economic growth. A second loan worth about 1 billion dollars will be contracted in the first part of 2015.
'The DPL loans will support Romania in its economic reform process and to strengthen governmental public debt management, by expanding the maturity of the lending portfolio, at advantageous costs. Contracting the DPL loans is conditioned on fulfilling some reform measures agreed upon with the Bank, related to economic sectors. The reform measures specific to the first DPL series are mainly aimed at strengthening public debt management, enhancing the quality of public spending (by introducing budgets for programmes based on results and prioritizing the important public investments), improving the management and performance of state-owned enterprises (by reinforcing the state's role as shareholder) and the functioning of property, energy, and capital markets,' the WB representatives said.
The first loan under this programme has a maturity of 18 years, at an interest equal to the 6-month EURIBOR plus a variable margin (the current margin is 0.47 percent, being changed by the Bank every six months), and it will be reimbursed in a single installment on May 15, 2032. In addition, the Bank charges an initial fee of 0.25 percent applied to the entire amount, which has to be paid before drawing the amount of the loan. The funds will be used to finance the state budget deficit and refinance the public debt, according to the legislation on public debt.