ANKARA
The European Investment Bank (EIB) has agreed to loan €200 million ($222 million) to Turkey's state-owned bank Ziraat Bank to finance small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as well as medium-sized corporates, the Turkish Treasury announced in a statement on Wednesday.
The loan will be guaranteed by the Treasury.
In separate statement, Ziraat Bank said another €100 ($111.5 million) could be made available to the bank until the end of the year, to be paid back over 8 years after an three-year grace period. The bank has taken loans for total of €600 ($667.5 million) from the European Investment Bank since 2012.
ZiraatBank earned a profit of 1.1 billion Turkish lira ($410 million) in the first quarter of the year, up by 18 percent from the same period of 2014. The bank employs more than 24,000 people in 1,701 branches and has 84 branches in sixteen foreign countries including Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kazakhstan, Russia, the U.K., the U.S., Georgia, Bulgaria and Greece.
