Chapter members who attended the lunch on 19th January heard our speaker Paul Aldridge reference 'Jessica’ and might have wondered what that meant. Here is a more complete explanation from Paul.
"For those keen and hardy souls, I'm afraid to be the bearer of disappointing news - there are not yet any academic papers to hand that I am aware of for circulation."
"Jessica stands for 'Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas,' and the essence of the position is shifting public sector funding towards a position of recoverability. In other words, it is proposed that Jessica stand as a 'loan,' but it doesn't have first charge over land in the manner that you'd expect with commercial debt finance."
"Exactly how this works in a tiered hierarchy of returns remains to be seen. A cynic could say if it's not first charge on the asset then it's pretty unlikely to be recovered, but it's just too early to see how it works. I hope that it moves us to a position of more economically sustainable development where the principles of equitable return on traditionally grant funded schemes are accepted, accepting that the risk profile for the parties may have to change to effect this shift. There are working papers in hand with WAG and NWDA, but the nuts and bolts of the project funding approach just aren't there yet."
See the Jessica information at the European Investment Bank web site:
http://www.eib.org/projects/publications/jessica.htm.
"Jessica: A new way of using EU funding to promote sustainable investments and growth in urban areas." (Date: 05/09/2008)
A 6 page PDF file describing Jessica is viewable from the above site in several languages, with the English version here:
http://www.eib.org/attachments/thematic/jessica_2008_en.pdf
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