NIB President calls for political commitment for Baltic Sea plan

“Financing is not a bottleneck if the political commitment is there. Good projects can always be financed,” said Johnny Åkerholm, President and CEO of NIB, at the HELCOM Baltic Cities Summit in Moscow on 18 May.

The Summit discussed the implementation of the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP), which aims at cleaning up the sea and restoring the ecological status of its marine environment by 2021.

“The implementation of the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan will above all require a resolute political will to allocate economic resources to something which will give a yield in a longer term,” said Mr Åkerholm.

He stressed the need for the BSAP projects to be bankable: the project needs to have a clear counterpart to the financial institutions as well as make it possible for them to assess the economic risks.

The NIB President emphasised that NIB established a special lending facility, BASE, with a framework of EUR 500 million and, together with the Nordic Environmental Finance Corporation NEFCO as joint managers, set up a BSAP trust fund.

The BSAP Fund has so far received contributions from Sweden and Finland, totalling EUR 10.6 million. The NIB President invited other countries to join the trust fund.

“We hope the fund will prompt the implementation process. It is now fully operational and a number of grants have already been approved,” said Mr Åkerholm.

The BSAP Fund provides grants for identifying, developing and implementing projects that comply with the BSAP targets. The projects are supported in their preparations to receive financing from international financial institutions as well as in their efforts to increase efficiency and quality. In addition, the projects receive institutional support and training.