January 29 (SeeNews) - The European Investment Fund and Croatia's development bank HBOR are launching a 70 million euro ($80 million) equity investment programme in support of fast growing SMEs and mid-caps, the European Commission said.
The Croatian growth investment programme (CROGIP) is supported by the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the core of the Investment Plan for Europe, the Commission said in a press release on Monday.
EIF and HBOR will each commit 35 million euro to finance this jointly developed programme and the combined commitments of 70 million euro are expected to catalyse additional private-sector investments into equity funds.
"A key programme objective is to support the emergence of fund managers, which focus a significant part of their investments into Croatian SMEs and midcaps," the Commission said.
This programme follows the CVCI ESIF Croatia programme, launched in June on the basis of a funding agreement between the EIF and the Croatian government. The CVCI is expected to contribute to improving the access to finance of SMEs by supporting development of Croatia's entrepreneurial ecosystem.
EIF will deploy the CROGIP through investments and co-investments into target firms. The programme will not be restricted to any sector in particular. The programme will seek to support emerging teams founded in Croatia and focused on the country through a Call for Expression of Interest with the objective to select such fund managers.
The Investment Plan for Europe, also called the Juncker Plan focuses on boosting investments, thus creating jobs and growth by using new and existing resources of finance, providing technical assistance and visibility to investment projects.