April 8 (SeeNews) - Croatia's economy ministry said it has introduced together with the state innovations and investments agency HAMAG-BICRO two new loan instruments, aiming to help small businesses mitigate the impact of the coronavirus crisis on their operations.
The two new facilities - COVID-19 loans and micro loans for rural development - were made available to the business as of this week, the ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
"By adjusting the existing financial instruments and introducing two new ones, we have made available to entrepreneurs more than 1.148 billion kuna ($163 million/150 million euro). We won't stop here, and are already trying in coordination with the economy ministry and the ministry in charge of regional development and EU funds to identify models for introducing new instruments in order to meet the needs of our users to the greatest extent," the head of HAMAG-BICRO, Vjeran Vrbanec, said in the statement.
The COVID-19 loan instrument is designed to provide additional liquidity to micro, small and middle-sized companies hit by the coronavirus pandemic, and has been financed solely by the European Fund for Regional Development, the statement added.
Companies will be able to take working capital loans for a variety of activities at a 0.25% interest rate. The maximum amount of the loan is 750,000 kuna with five-year maturity and a 12-month grace period.
The micro loans for rural development programme target small businesses active in agriculture, processing and forestry. They will be able to take individual loans from 1,000 euro up to 25,000 euro to support their working capital.
The repayment period is three years with a 12-month grace period and a 0.5% interest rate. These loans will be approved in a faster manner, with significantly less documentation required than usually. The funding under this instrument is coming under EU's Rural Development Programme.
(1 euro = 7.62989 kuna)