Small and medium businesses will have the opportunity to make use of €2 million in European funds to buy machinery or equipment. This was announced earlier today by the Minister for the Economy, European Funds and Lands Silvio Schembri and the Parliamentary Secretary for European Funds Chris Bonett.
This scheme that will open on 1 February 2023, will be replacing existing schemes that will close at the end of this month, from the 2014-2020 funding program.
Minister Silvio Schembri said that in our country around 95% of the businesses fall under the small and medium cap and that between them they employ around 140,000 people. “Therefore when we are helping and coming up with schemes to help these types of businesses, we are giving help to the entire economy of our country,” repeated Minister Schembri.
He explained that these funds can be used, among others, to buy equipment that helps the business become more efficient. He claimed that this is in line with the government’s strategy where towards the end of last year four strategies were launched through which we will see more Maltese businesses make the digital core and thus be more resilient.
“We know that many businesses do not apply for European funds because of the long and bureaucratic process. But this scheme will be simplified so that more businesses can make use of it. This is also part of a process that the ministry for the economy is working on even in other areas such as to facilitate the process for a company to have a bank account,” concluded Minister Schembri.
Parliamentary Secretary Chris Bonett said that they are investing €2 million from the European Fund for Regional Development in these schemes to help businesses invest in equipment and machinery that will help them improve the productivity of -enterprise.
“This government cares about businesses and also from the new program of European funds that we will launch in the coming days we will continue to help more businesses and enterprises. We will also see that we have a simplified process for more businesses to make use of European funds,” concluded Chris Bonett.
Photos: MEFL/MEFL_PS
