May 18 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria is considering providing a further 20 million levs ($11.1 million/10.2 million euro) in assistance to local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) affected by the coronavirus crisis, economy minister Emil Karanikolov said.
The financial assistance will come on top of 173 million levs in joint funding for the purpose provided by the EU and Bulgaria last month, Karanikolov said in a video file published on the website of local NOVA TV on Friday.
In April, the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) said that Bulgarian SMEs impacted by the crisis will be granted a total of 173 million levs - some 147.0 million levs through ERDF's operational programme Innovations and Competitiveness 2014-2020 and 25.9 million levs by the Bulgarian state.
"Тhese actions have been agreed upon with Brussels [...] There are over 600 million levs in the programme," Karanikolov said, adding that the government seeks to provide liquidity to SMEs first and support bigger companies later.
As of May 14, Bulgarian SMEs can apply for financing under the EU-backed support programme. Within a day, 16,500 applications for support worth a total of 136 million levs have been submitted, deputy prime minister Tomislav Donchev said in the video file.
Under the SME support programme, each candidate can benefit from a grant of between 3,000 levs and 10,000 levs, if approved. The requested financial support can not exceed 10% of the company's 2019 net profit from sales.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)