The action offers assistance to mature investment
plans for the design, development and marketing
of innovative products and value-added services
related to, or based on, Information and
Communications Technologies (ICT).
The products and services that will be developed
through these investment plans may be offered to
individual consumers, as well as to other busi-
nesses. They can also comprise an end-prod-
uct/service, or be part of a more complex system.
In any case, the end result of the investment
(product or service) should:
● be technologically mature and fully operational
in regard to its purpose;
● utilize cutting-edge technologies;
● be innovative in terms of the technologies uti-
lized, the nature of the services offered or the
overall marketing business model;
● target a clearly specified market, covering cer-
tain and real needs of this market;
● be competitive in comparison to similar prod-
ucts or services available abroad (in case a
competitive market already exists).
Equally interesting is the option offered by
ETEAN’s new programmes for the extension of
working capital loans to small and medium-sized
enterprises, as well as the issuance of letters of
guarantee.
The working capital programme utilizes
€
170 mil-
lion in NSRF funds, which had been “parked” with
ETEAN, in order to finance Fund actions that
show low to zero absorption rates. The leverage
ratio for these funds has been reduced from 1:1
to 1:3, meaning that the
€
170 million available
through the NSRF will be topped by another
€
170
million through the banks, so that total working
capital loans to businesses will stand at approxi-
mately
€
340 million. This way, interest rate subsi-
dization will reach 50%, since the part of the loan
that originates from NSRF funds will be interest-
free, therefore borrowers will, in fact, be charged
with only half the market rate.
The banks deemed that the remaining
€
130 mil-
lion in NSRF funds that are also “parked” with the
Entrepreneurship Fund can be absorbed, and
thus these funds remain available to the existing
programmes, for which leverage ratios have also
been reset to 1:1, in order to facilitate absorption.
These are programmes aimed at supporting
entrepreneurship, young entrepreneurship, inno-
vation, extroversion, tourism, the “Green” econo-
my etc.
Trade with Greece
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