Twofold increase in the speed in approving the projects, faster payment of funds and greater absorption rate of the money for businesses, promised last week the Minister of Economy Delian Dobrev after the removal of obstacles previously created by the Agency for Small and Medium Enterprises as an intermediary unit under the Competitiveness programme. For this purpose a new Chief Directorate European Funds for Competitiveness has been created in the Ministry of Economy, which unites the managing authority and the intermediary body. The new structure will be directly subordinate to the Minister, but will be headed by a General Director – Kiril Gerakliev. He has been an expert at the Agency for SMEs and has worked in the Ministry of Regional Development over the last eight years.
Before this reform ministries and agencies to some extent competed even in that, if I may say, who is more important. We do not have overlapping functions now, we have a team – 238 people working for one purpose and not trying to prove to each other who is more important, said Mr. Dobrev.
The structure of the new administration has also been optimized – instead of 12 departments in the two previous bodies, they will now be six only, and the number of signatures for approval of reports decreased from 24 to twelve. In addition, companies will now have the opportunity to constantly consult with experts from the ministry, and not as the situation has been so far – only one day a week (Wednesday), and then only from 14 to 16 hours.
According to Minister Dobrev, a revision is pending for the current schemes for grants for which there is little interest. Part of the funds will be transferred to other instruments, where a large number of quality projects apply, but funding is not enough and this will be one of the first tasks of the new DG. Indicative is the case with the latest scheme Covering the internationally recognized standards and implementation of management systems in enterprises, where over 1,300 companies have applied. After screening, green light has been seemingly given to 1154 proposals, but in fact 913 of them remained in the so-called reserve list. The reason is that the projected sum of EUR25 million is sufficient only for the first 241 companies that received the best scores, whose actual calculation however is not completely clear. Similarly, last year 56 large companies with annual turnover exceeding BGN100 million, who had prepared projects for technological modernization and had passed all procedures, were remained below the line. Then the budget was enough to support only 20 companies. Against the approved projects for which no money could be provided, however, there are millions of euros under other schemes of the Competitiveness programme, and these are funds expected to be lost because of low interest in the schemes. This includes the nearly BGN500 million for innovation for example, that remain almost unabsorbed.
Until now the contracted funds under the Competitiveness operational programme are nearly EUR502.5 million (including the Jeremie instrument), which represents 43.2 percent of the entire resource. Without the Jeremie, the amount was EUR303.5 million (31.5%). With the new streamlined procedures, nearly EUR660 million is expected to be agreed by the end of 2013. This will ensure that by 2015 the businesses will get a total of EUR875 million, which is about 75% of the financial resources of the programme. The funds disbursed until now have been EUR288 million – nearly 25 percent of the whole amount, explained Minister Delian Dobrev.
