Termoelectrica gets 190m euros from ING

ING Bank is to lend Termoelectrica 190 million euros. The loan will be secured by the Finance Ministry and used mainly to refinance a credit given to the company by the State to redeem a bond issue released in 2001. The loan was granted for a period of five years and comes with a two-year grace period. From this loan, Termoelectrica managed to repay to the Finance Ministry a credit obtained from the Treasury this March to repay a eurobond issue falling due and for which the company had no funds. In this way, the Finance Ministry has saved Termoelectrica’s reputation, and implicitly that of the Romanian State, on international capital markets, though it risked seeing the loan included in the budgetary deficit, as required by the IMF, which would have made the aim of reducing the deficit harder. The situation was eventually solved with a loan from ING. The money transferred to the Treasury also reduces the need for new bond issues on the domestic market. ZF