The national oil company Ina took out a €300 million revolving loan from a consortium of eight banks, which they intend to use "for general corporate purposes," the company said on Thursday. These include investments and re-financing an earlier revolving loan from December 2018, state news agency Hina said, citing the company's press release.

Ina is co-owned by the Croatian government, which owns a 45-percent stake, and Hungary’s oil company Mol, which controls around 49 percent of Ina.

The eight banks include BNP Paribas, ING Bank Hungary, MKB Bank Nyrt, OTP Banka, Privredna Banka Zagreb, Raiffeisenbank Austria, SMBC Bank EU AG, Tatra Banka and  Zagrebacka Banka.

Ina had also issued a 2 billion kuna (€266 million) corporate bond in December 2021, which was one of the largest corporate bonds ever issued on the Croatian. “Ina has again achieved very competitive financing terms,” Hina cited the press release, without releasing any details of the loan terms.

“The new loan agreement will further contribute to Ina’s financial stability and competitiveness, and support the company in achieving its strategic goals aimed at long-term sustainable growth,” CEO of Ina, Peter Ratatics, was quoted as saying.

Ratatics was appointed in September, having previously served as COO at Mol in Hungary.

He replaced Sandor Fasimon, who left the post after a gas trading scandal shook the company earlier this year, in which a Croatian gas executive had allegedly formed an illegal trading ring which earned about 1 billion kuna (€133) by buying up Ina’s natural gas extracted from Croatian gas fields at subsidized prices and reselling it on the international market.

One of the largest companies in Croatia, Ina had posted 16.9 billion kuna (€2.2 billion) revenue over the first nine months of 2022, or 45 percent up from the same period in 2021, with net profit totaling 1.1 billion kuna (€146 billion), down 14 percent from 1.3 billion kuna posted in Jan-Sep 2021.

Among the investment projects planned, Ratatics cited the modernizing of Ina’s oil refinery in the port city of Rijeka, a project worth 4 billion kuna (€532 million), and the investment of more than 1 billion kuna (€133 million) in the exploration and exploitation of offshore gas fields in the Adriatic Sea.