August 15 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria will disburse 93 million levs ($48.5 million/47.6 million euro) in EU grants to stimulate energy efficiency improvement initiatives at micro-, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), the innovation ministry said.
As many as 920 businesses will sign contracts to receive the grants by mid-September, the ministry said in a press release over the weekend.
All beneficiaries hail from the processing industry and are divided into 141 subsectors, with the majority of companies involved in the manufacturing of furniture, metal equipment and products, plastics, outerwear, and bread and bakery products among others.
Plovdiv and Sofia accounted for the largest number of projects approved, by 138 and 101 companies, respectively, for an aggregate of over 20 million in funding.
The MSMEs were approved as grant recipients under the final business support mechanism of the operating programme Innovations and Competitiveness for the previous programming period 2014-2020.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)