The Minister of Industry and Tourism, Jordi Hereu, announced today that the new Entrepreneurship and Small and Medium Enterprise Fund (SME) has so far received 582 applications for funding amounting to 153 million euros.
In his speech at the 39th edition of the Digital Economy and Telecommunications Meeting, organized by AMETIC within the framework of the summer courses of the Menéndez Pelayo International University, Hereu has released the first data of this new instrument to support innovative startups, endowed with 303 million euros and managed by ENISA, a public company attached to the Ministry of Industry and Tourism.
In addition, the minister has announced that during the second half of September the first operations of a fund will be pre-approved that reaffirms the commitment to the transformation of our production model towards a more innovative and resilient economy and that, according to the number of requests, has aroused an enormous interest in the business ecosystem.
Details of FESME loans
The €303 million of this new fund comes from the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism (MRR), and the characteristics of the loans include a maximum repayment term of seven years, with a maximum of five years of non-repayment of the principal.
Likewise, the amount of the loans is between €25,000 and €1.5M, and may not exceed the amount equivalent to the company’s own funds. No additional guarantees will be required for the granting of the loan to the company project itself, but the companies must have a technically and economically viable plan.
With FESME, ENISA triples its budget and responds to a historical demand of the sector, such as having a stable and robust financing mechanism that provides security and confidence to entrepreneurial projects.