April 1, 2014
JESSICA, JASPERS, JASMINE, JEREMIE – sounds like a merry company in an American series – such as “Friends” …
The dear JESSICA name does not hide female beauty, but urban investments and dreams come true.
JESSICA is actually an acronym for the first letters of Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas. Her godparents are European civil servants in Brussels, Luxembourg, Berlin and Paris, who decided that the financial initiative should have a simple name to pronounce.
JESSICA has a short “credit history” – conceptually created in 2006; the creation of funds in different European cities and regions began in 2009 with funding from European Structural Funds. It started in Bulgaria in 2010 with an agreement between the government and the European Investment Bank.
The main purpose of JESSICA is to grant long-term and lower interest rate loans (less often – guarantees and equity) for projects with a social impact and with some but insufficient that are driven by municipalities or private investors, or public-private partnerships.
(Banks do the same, but not for such long periods, nor as cheap, nor for projects with a social dimension 🙂 )
These loans are granted by special purpose funds.
Such as the Regional Fund for Urban Development AD (whose blog this is) – one of the two Bulgarian funds under the JESSICA initiative.
Our meaning of existence is to identify and finance JESSICA type projects in Bourgas, Pleven, Plovdiv, Rousse, Stara Zagora and Varna.
Other cities? So far, other cities in Bulgaria are not covered, apart from Sofia, which has its own fund: http://www.jessicasofia.com/).
What kind of projects are JESSICA eligible?
Such as this project in Poland?
Private investor adapts former barracks building as a medical center in West Pomerania in Poland. It is a 2.7 million euro project with a JESSICA loan of 1.25 million.
Yes, JESSICA can help.
And we’ll talk about the project financing requirements later.
Who are the others in the acronyms company?
JASPERS -the Grants Initiative for the twelve new EU member countries for the preparation of quality applications for EU funding for infrastructure projects of over 50 million euro for roads, dams, railroads, water purification, waste, energy, public transport etc.
JASMINE – support for microcredit organizations in the EU for paying feasibility studies, ratings, staff training, support services etc.
JEREMIE – direct support to small and medium enterprises for creating new business or expansion, for modernization, new products and innovation through special funds for guaranteed loans at low rates and equity investments.
(These are initiatives of the European Commission, the European Investment Bank, the European Investment Fund, the German Bank for Reconstruction (KfW), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the names are abbreviations of the first letters of their full names in English,
see http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/thefunds/instruments/index_en.cfm)
Date: Aut. 15, 2013