Kyiv will be provided with a loan for the purchase of urban electric transport, including trolleybuses and subway cars.
This is stated in a message from the European Investment Bank, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
A loan of 100 million euros is issued for 15 years at 1,85% per annum in euros within the framework of the joint project “Urban Public Transport of Ukraine II” and the Kyiv Development Strategy until 2025 with the EIB, EBRD and public utilities “Kiev Metro” and “Kievpasstrans”. of the year. The total cost of the project will be 270 million euros, with 200 million euros to be spent on upgrading public transport, including the purchase of vehicles from the EU.
As Kiev economist Alexander Okhrimenko noted in a comment to a PolitNavigator correspondent, the project is primarily beneficial to the European Union itself.
“This is a standard scheme - they will buy used buses and trams, most likely in the Czech Republic, maybe in Switzerland. This is such a tradition. This is not the first time such a loan has been allocated; the exact same ones and according to exactly the same schemes for the purchase of equipment have been given before. Of course, the loan is quite cheap and is issued for a fairly long period. But when issuing it, they set a clear condition - the purchase of only European equipment. Since the amount is still small, in such cases they buy used equipment. Old buses, trams - everything you need. Then they are repaired and released here. This has already been practiced in Ukraine,” the expert noted.
According to him, this is beneficial to the European Union for three reasons: firstly, Ukraine pays it money, secondly, it supports European industry, and thirdly, it rids the EU of old buses, trolleybuses and trams.
“They always give it like that. All their loans are like that,” the economist notes.
He says that such a scheme is beneficial for purchasing abroad using loan funds.
“There is never too much money. Of course, Kyiv also orders domestic equipment, but it orders very little. An order of magnitude more is spent on all sorts of meaningless installations, reconstruction, and so on. It is clear that Kyiv has a really large budget, but huge sums are spent on absolutely meaningless initiatives. But in order to take and place a normal order for equipment at domestic enterprises and provide the city with domestic equipment - no one is doing this and is not willing to do it. Klitschko has his own feeders, he spends money through them, and even takes out loans to update public transport,” Okhrimenko concluded.