November 29 (SeeNews) - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has picked eight Serbian companies to receive financing totalling 135,000 euro ($153,582) for green investments under its Green Innovation Voucher scheme, the lender said on Thursday.
Serbian small businesses have started to benefit from a new scheme designed to increase their innovation capacity in green technologies and resource efficiency, the EBRD said in a statement.
In its first year the scheme has supported 29 projects with vouchers worth a combined 435,000 euro. The successful projects come from sectors such as precision agriculture, energy and materials efficiency, waste management, renewables and eco-friendly products, the bank said.
The EBRD has moved into a new phase of the scheme which will target projects with larger resource-efficiency impact, and increased the value of the vouchers up to 50,000 euro. A new call for applications for mega vouchers is open from November 29, the bank added.
The Green Voucher Scheme was introduced a year ago in Serbia to promote green technologies and resource efficiency as core elements of the country’s transition to the green economy.
The EBRD-led initiative is funded by the Austrian Delivering Resource Efficiency Investments Programme (DRIVE) and supported by Italy through the Central European Initiative (CEI).
($ = 0.8091 euro)