Presenting the opportunities of EU project financing in the framework of the European SME Week and Single Market Week
Ljubljana, 17 October 2012 – In the framework of the European SME Week and the Single Market Week the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology (MEDT) organised a meeting in Ljubljana where the opportunities of EU entrepreneur project financing were presented. The representatives of MEDT and other institutions spoke about the co-financing of projects in the framework of the programme for the instruments of financial engineering and the measures for the promotion of research-development activities in the economy and knowledge institutions.
The promotion of entrepreneurship and competitiveness is one of the main objectives of the EU Cohesion Policy. The support for this objective is provided in the framework of the operational programmes, namely through the measures of promoting competitive ability of enterprises and the measures for the promotion of entrepreneurship. Special emphasis is on the small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) which, on the one hand, promote economic development with favourable administrative environment and accessibility to sources of financing being, on the other hand, the precondition for growth. The economic crisis calls for new sources of financing – for direct (subsidies) as well as indirect initiatives (guarantees, subsidies for interest rates, financial engineering instruments). The assistance to the fast growing and innovative small and medium-sized enterprises is provided in the framework of the Operational Programme for Strengthening Regional Development Potentials for the period 2007–2013; however, so far only a small number of enterprises were awarded the programme funds. This is also one of the reasons why the meeting, which presented the financing and, thus, the possibilities of providing assistance to SME, was attended by a large number of participants.
The second part of the meeting focused on the presentation of evaluating the measures for the promotion of research-development activities (development-investment projects in the framework of the Operational Programme for Strengthening Regional Development Potentials for the period 2007–2013 and young researchers in the framework of the Operational Programme for Human Resources Development for the period 2007–2013). Namely, in the last few years the EU funds have practically been the only funds for the financing of research-development projects; over 80 percent of these funds were used for innovations. This is one of the ways to promote the competitiveness of the Slovenian economy.
The impacts on the increased competitiveness can be measured with the invested funds in research and development and the orientation of the funds into the activities, branches and enterprises which create added value and high technological jobs. While the branches of the economy observe a decrease in the economic crisis, we observe growth only in the field of research, development and innovations, which is also the result of the investments into the development-innovation activities and the investments into the development of highly educated personnel, especially in the technical fields and natural science. Measuring synergies provides adequate information about knowledge society, which is capable of creating competitive products with high added value.
