The government is putting a further €2 million into the Jeremie Initiative to help SMEs get access to finance.
Jeremie is a European Investment Bank scheme administered by Bank of Valletta. The government had an original involvement of €8 million.
The EIB money acts as a guarantee against which BOV lends.
The scheme was meant to last for three years started from April 2011 but it was fully subscribed, providing more than 500 SMEs with €52 million worth of loans.
The government's commitment was announced by Parliamentary Secretary Ian Borg during the presentation of a report by the Malta Business Report. The report is aimed at encouraging the government to allocate more EU funds from the next programming period to the private sector.
The MBB study showed that during the 2007-2013 programming period, only €70 million of the €855 million EU funds were made available to private enterprises. The bureau is proposing an allocation of between €180m and €200m in the next programming period, when the allocation to Malta is in excess of €1 billion.