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, acting as a guarantee against which BOV then lends to SMEs at lower interest rates and with less stringent collateral requirements.

BOV opted to loan 5.8 times as much as the amount guaranteed.

The scheme was meant to last for three years, starting from April 2011, but it is now fully subscribed, providing more than 500 SMEs with €52 million worth of loans.

The commitment, which will be made available in October, was announced by the Parliamentary Secretary for EU Funds, Ian Borg, during the presentation of a report by the Malta Business Bureau.

The report encourages the Government to allocate more EU funds to the private sector in the next programming period.

Dr Borg said the Government had already held a number of consultation meetings on the subject of EU funds and had set up a committee within the Department of Contracts that would be working solely on tenders involving EU-funded projects.

The MBB study showed that, during the 2007-2013 programming period, only €70 million of the €855 million EU funds allocated to Malta was made available to private enterprises.

The bureau is proposing an allocation of between €180 million and €200 million in the next programming period, when the allocation to the island is in excess of €1 billion.

The report, sponsored by BOV, was presented to Dr Borg by MBB president George Vella, who said the private sector was interested in financial engineering instruments, like Jeremie, rather than grants because these had a multiplier effect and ended up generating more economic growth.

“Malta’s economy necessitates economic growth that is mostly export-led. This can only be brought about through further investment in the private sector,” he said.

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