HRK 98m to be allocated for water utility system in 12 east Croatian towns

ZAGREB, June 6 (Hina) – The Hrvatske Vode water management company General Director, Zoran Djurokovic, and local officials on Friday signed eight contracts for building the public water utility systems in the Osijek-Baranja, Vukovar-Srijem and Pozega-Slavonia Counties worth HRK 98 million excluding VAT.

The system will be built in the following towns: Ernestinovo, Lovas, Donja Moticina, Drenovci, Vrbanja, Pleternica, Djakovo, Satnica Djakovačka, Vladislavci, Vuka, Erdut i Dalj.

Djurokovic emphasised that the contracts provide for building 35 kilometres of new water supply network and 20 kilomentres of new sewage facilities.

“At this moment in Croatia, we have several similar ongoing projects and projects to be launched which should be finished by 2023 and which are worth HRK 24 billion. The figure should be observed in the context of the construction sector which will be an indispensable and strong facilitator of Croatia’s economic growth in the following years, and in the context of maintaining the high level of employment in that sector,” stated the Minister of Environmental Protection and Energy, Tomislav Coric, who witnessed the occasion.

EBRD provides Porec with additional €6m to complete wastewater project

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) announced on Friday that it had granted an additional € 6 million loan to the town of Porec for finishing the town sewerage project.

“The town of Porec, one of the most popular tourism destinations on the Adriatic coast, will be able to finish a key infrastructure project in the challenging times of the global coronavirus pandemic owing to an EBRD loan to the amount of € 6 million,” the bank stated in the press release.

The project includes reconstructing and upgrading the existing sewerage system and building four new wastewater treatment plants.

The new plants will be able to treat 3.2 million cube metres of wastewater per year, in accordance with the EU regulations.

The additional loan builds on an earlier EBRD loan to the amount of € 4 million, which was granted in parallel wit the EU Cohesion fund grant, it was pointed out in the press release.

The loan beneficiary is the Odvodnja Porec municipal utility company, which provides the service of wastewater collection and treatment in the wider Porec area.

The Head of the EBRD for Croatia, Victoria Zinchuk, was quoted as saying that “the EBRD is committed to continuing its support for investments in Croatia despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.”

The town of Porec and the Odvodnja Porec company are our long-term clients, stated Zinchuk, expressing her satisfaction with the fact that they had secured the additional funds necessary to finish the investment into the wastewater collection and treatment network.

The director of the Odvodnja Porec company, Milan Lakovic, said that the company was implementing one of the most important projects in the water management sector in the area, in challenging and unpredictable circumstances.

The EBRD signed its first project in Croatia in 1994 and has invested over €3.9 billion in 218 projects there to date. The bank’s activities include all areas of the economy, with a special focus on the infrastructure, corporate, financial institutions and energy sectors.

(€1 = HRK 7.575991)