The City of Sibiu in central Romania will have improved transport services with the help of a €10mn EBRD loan to the city and a separate €5mn loan to SC Tursib, the city’s wholly-owned public transport company.

The loan to the city will help finance a street rehabilitation programme across three suburban areas comprising around 36 streets. The bank will syndicate part of the loan to Anglo-Romanian Bank, the London-based subsidiary of Banca Comerciala Romana. The €5mn to Tursib will help buy 30 new buses, as well as equipment to maintain these buses.

Thomas Maier, EBRD director for municipal and environmental infrastructure, says the City of Sibiu has a focused strategy to improve its streets, urban transport, and other infrastructure, and the EBRD is supporting that strategy, which will ultimately benefit residents, tourists and businesses.

Last year, the bank helped the city improve its urban transport through a €15mn loan to finance rehabilitation of the Railway Exchange Square, and provided co-financing to a European Union ISPA-funded project that supported a water and wastewater improvement programme for Sibiu’s water company.

Klaus Werner Johannis, mayor of Sibiu, says the EBRD’s loan is supporting our initiative to improve the City of Sibiu. The loan is the latest in a partnership between the bank and Sibiu, and in this instance the EBRD is helping to improve street safety.

Adrian Popa, general director of Tursib, says the bank’s loan is crucial to helping it update its bus fleet. With passenger levels averaging around 60-65,000 people a day, it is important to cater for their services in the best way possible, and the bank’s loan is helping to do that, he adds. The new fleet will consist of 22 large buses, and eight medium-sized buses which will be used in the historic part of the city.