The EIB offers a helping hand to education

TIRANA, Oct. 17 – The European Investment Bank (EIB) offered a new loan of 12.5 million to upgrade the Albanian education system on Tuesday. This move is part of a larger and diverse strategy to help develop the Albanian education system. EIB thus joins the World Bank which has approved a $15 million loan, the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB) and the Albanian government. The education loan will be used to finance the programs of the National Strategy for Education for 2004-20015, especially the ones targeting school governance and the improvement of learning outcomes which are the focus of the first part of the strategy ending in 2010. The EIB has diversified its lending portfolio to Albania since it first opened when it lent mainly to reconstruct infrastructure.
The EIB is one of the main partners of the countries in the Western Balkans (an area designed to include Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, FYR of Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia) in their ongoing process of European Integration. Its cumulative investment in this region exceeds $1.8 billion.