Municipal Fund – the instrument to support the development of housing in municipalities

Abstract

The subject of the article is to analyze the possibility and legitimacy of cooperation of municipalities and housing associations with the Social Fund Municipal TFI SA BGK. The Municipal Fund created by the Society of Investment Funds SA BGK is a completely new instrument registered on 30 December 2015. Its legal and financial structure indicates that it could be the long-term financial investor (the perspective of financing from several to 25 years) in the area of real estate cubic implemented by municipalities or their subordinate municipal companies. In particular, it applies to municipalities and TBS, as a result of the implementation in 2007–2013 of investments co-financed by the Cohesion Fund and the European Regional Development Fund, which are characterized by a high ratio of debt which prevents investments and plan the impossible investments, in practice, of financing from the CF and the ERDF to 2020. The main aim of this article is to analyze the advantages and disadvantages that may result from using the new financial instrument by the municipality. The advantages include mainly the ability to launch investment projects while minimizing so-called own shares, without significantly charging the current municipal budget, the access to long-term financing taking into account the specificity of local government units, the bright and predetermined for both the rules of the project, the guaranteed exit mechanism of the Fund from the investment ensuring the transfer of full control over the company to local government. The disadvantages include, among others, the need to ensure a fairly high profitability of the project in order to repay the Fund. The article is also accentuated by the special role of the Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego SA in providing support housing in municipalities.