Erste: We will finance Comarnic-Brasov motorway

Erste Group, which owns the BCR bank, is interested to finance the project to build the Comarnic-Brasov motorway (55 kilometres), the first public-private partnership contract signed in the infrastructure sector. This is the first official announcement of a bank about funding the Comarnic-Brasov section, the contract of which was signed on 18th of January.

Werner Weihs-Raabl, head of the infrastructure financing division of Erste Group, did not say how much the loan for the Snow Highway (the nickname for this motorway i.e.) would be worth, but said that the Austrian group could allocate more than 1 billion euros to Romania's projects assigned to concessionaries - highways, airports, bridges, hospitals and orbital roads over the next three or four years.

"We need to identify the conditions in which the Comarnic-Brasov project will be carried out and eventually the risks that the state is taking and those of the builder. BCR, however, will be part of this project because one bank is unable to finance such an investment," explains Weihs-Raabl, who believes the names of the banks that will finance the project should be known by the end of the year.