BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 5. A total of 149.8m euros in European funding for the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB) project has been utilized as of the beginning of May, the ICGB AD, the project company, told Trend.
The company noted that €44.1 million is the amount that remains to be utilized by the ICGB project company until the project is fully completed. A total of 77 percent of the grant and loan funding have been utilized.
The construction of the gas interconnector between Bulgaria and Greece is worth a total of €240 million: €45 million are provided under the European Energy Program for Recovery (EEPR), €39 million are allocated under the Operational Program "Innovation and Competitiveness" (OPIC) 2014-2020), €109.9 million were provided in the form of a loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB), and the remaining funds were secured by the shareholders – the Bulgarian national company BEH and the Greek-Italian IGI Poseidon.
The full funding for the gas interconnector between the two neighboring countries was finally secured in 2019, following the finalization of the EIB loan agreement. As part of the mechanisms for security and control of funds, the amounts provided for the project are not automatically allocated to the project company but are utilized in stages in separate tranches to ICGB only after successful completion of multiple audits. The inspections are performed by independent foreign companies, which perform both audit of documentation and on-site inspections. This model ensures that all activities and procedures for the implementation of the project are performed in accordance with all legal requirements.
---
Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn