VILNIUS – Lithuania will apply for an up to 1.8-billion-euro loan for investment from the European Union’s (EU) Recovery Fund, the Cabinet decided on Wednesday.
The Finance Ministry will notify the European Commission of this decision on Thursday.
Finance Minister Gintare Skaiste said at the government meeting on Wednesday that Lithuania was eligible for up to 3 billion euros in loans and 2.2 billion euros in grants under the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF).
“Earlier Lithuania submitted a plan related only to grants but now we see that borrowing costs will increase and perhaps it will make sense to use this possibility and, having taken other additional reasons into account, we are submitting an update to the [national recovery and resilience] plan, New Generation Lithuania,” she said.
“We propose to use this possibility, if we receive 198 million euros in grants via REPowerEU, also to use a possibility to borrow up to 1.8 billion euros and, overall, to update the plan of measures worth 1.9 billion euros,” Skaiste added.
The Finance Ministry explained that changes to the plan were made necessary by the fact that the amount of grants available to Lithuania under the RRF was cut by 125 million euros. In order to preserve the ambitions of the plan, this amount will be covered using money from the RRT loan and additional REPowerEU funds, i.e. 193.7 million euros.
According to the ministry, the authorities envisage additional 1 billion euros for loans to businesses to finance green, innovative, digital technologies as well as the production and exports of high added-value products.