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Representatives of the Ministry of Public Finance (MFP) and of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) signed on Wednesday two loan agreements worth a total of 90 million euro aimed at mitigating risks in emergency situations, informs MFP.
The first agreement, amounting to 50 million euro, targets the Improving Resilience and Emergency Response Project and the second, worth 40 million euro, the Infrastructure Consolidation and Emergency Preparedness Project.
The agreements were signed on Romania's behalf by Finance Minister Eugen Teodorovici and on behalf of IBRD by the country manager for Romania and Hungary of the bank, Tatiana Proskuryakova.
Each loan is granted for a period of up to 10 years, the reimbursement is to be made in one installment on 1 February 2029, the amounts of the loans being available until 31 December 2025.
The implementation of the planned actions will be ensured by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, through the Implementation Units of the projects set up for this purpose within the General Inspectorate of Police and the General Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie.
The Finance Minister believes that these agreements will support the efforts of the Police and the Gendarmerie to mitigate disaster risk.
"The loan agreements signed today [Wednesday, ed.n.] will help to the increase of the response speed of the critical facilities of the Romanian Police and Gendarmerie and will strengthen the institutional capacity to reduce the risks of disasters. Thus, by rehabilitating and modernizing a number of 64 buildings belonging to the Police and the Gendarmerie will ensure that these institutions can respond more quickly to natural disasters and reduce the impact on the affected population. The World Bank Group is a strategic partner for Romania and, as far as the bank's financing strategy is concerned, as EU Member State, we encourage the diversification of funding instruments with a focus on adapting them to the specifics of each Member State and ensuring complementarity with other available sources of funding," commented Eugen Teodorovici.
Over the past decade, the World Bank Group has become the world leader in disaster risk management, supporting member countries in disaster exposure assessment and management. The two loans are part of a series dedicated to strengthening the resilience to the impact of natural disasters and climate change in Romania, the first loan of this series being contracted in 2018 to improve disaster risk management implemented by the General Emergency Situation Inspectorate. The second one is aimed at development policies on disaster risk management with a deferred drawdown option for catastrophic risks (Cat DDO).
