Toledo.- Alberto Martínez Lacambra, General Director of Red.es, - entity attached to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation through the Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence - and Francisco Tierraseca Galdón, Government delegate in Castilla La Mancha have inaugurated and closed today in Toledo the informative meeting on the Digital Kit program. This aid program of the Government of Spain, managed by Red.es, aims to promote the digitization of small, micro-enterprises and self-employed, and thus contribute to modernizing the Spanish productive fabric.
Toledo is one of the chosen destinations of the informative meetings tour that Red.es began in 2022 and covers all of Spain. The objective is to explain to small companies, micro-enterprises and self-employed professionals how they can access this aid, what advantages the digitalization of their companies has and what facilitating role the digitizing agents and other collaborating entities play in this process. In the coming months the tour will continue with stops in different places in Spain.
Extended deadline to apply for assistance until December 2024
The deadline to request the help of Kit Digital will be open until December 2024 with grants of € 12,000, € 6,000 and € 2,000 depending on the number of employees that the company or the self-employed has.
In the province of Toledo, more than 1,800 Digital Kit grants have already been granted to small businesses, micro-enterprises and self-employed people, which means that more than 10 million euros from European Next Generation EU funds have reached SMEs in the province to implement basic digitization solutions.
In the Autonomous Community of Castilla La Mancha as a whole, there are currently more than 6,000 grants granted, with more than 30 million of the Recovery Plan being in the hands of SMEs and self-employed people in order to digitize their businesses.
For his part, the delegate of the Government of Spain in Castilla-La Mancha, Francisco Tierraseca, has valued the relevance of the European Funds, in this case through the Next Generation EU program, to “modernize and stimulate the recovery of economic growth in Spain” both through important reforms and investments and initiatives such as the Digital Kit, “which is receiving such a good response from small companies and self-employed people in our region.”
Tierraseca has stressed that the commitment to digitization is one of the priority axes of action for the Government of Spain and has defended that this program has allowed, and will continue to allow, that a huge part of the Castilian-Manchego business fabric, which is supported by more than 80% by SMEs and self-employed, can count on public support “to initiate or strengthen its digital transformation”, which, undoubtedly, the delegate added, will result in greater competitiveness.
Alberto Martínez Lacambra, General Manager of Red.es, highlighted that "this program has been designed with SMEs and the self-employed in mind, making it easy and agile. This is something that we are achieving since at the moment, more than 180,000 grants have already been granted, which means that more than 920 million euros have reached small businesses, micro-enterprises and self-employed people to digitize their businesses. And to be increasingly productive and competitive. The CEO of Red.es has encouraged SMEs to request the help of Kit Digital and recalled that “the deadline to be able to request the digital voucher has been extended in all calls until December 2024”.
The Corporate Deputy Director of Red.es, Antonio Saravia, was in charge of explaining the Digital Kit program in depth, as well as the detail of the application procedures for grants and the adhesion of digitizing agents. Also, and with the collaboration of María Conde Pita, Director of Competitiveness and Internationalization of the Chamber of Commerce of Toledo, they resolved the main consultations raised by both companies and digitizing agents.
Agile and simple program for SMEs and freelancers
Kit Digital is an innovative program, among other aspects, for its agility in the processing of grants. Under the motto of ‘zero papers’ and thanks to robotization tools, it has been possible to speed up the process so that it has been possible to reduce the processing time of a dossier from three hours on average to three minutes. This agility allows that, if a request is correct, it is granted within 15 days.
In fact, currently, 100% of the companies that met the requirements and correctly submitted the application are receiving their digital voucher.
Another of the innovations of the Program is the figure of the “voluntary representative” that allows any third party, be it a natural or legal person, duly authorized, to request the subsidy on behalf of the company eliminating procedures to the SME and the self-employed.
The figure of the ‘digitizing agent’
Kit Digital wanted to give a leading role to ICT SMEs to ensure that digitization is maintained over time and improves the productivity of beneficiaries and digitizing agents. In fact, at the moment there are about 10,200 agents registered, of which 98% are small ICT companies.
Entities interested in being a ‘digitizing agent’ may continue to apply for membership for the entire duration of the Program at the electronic headquarters of Red.es (sede.red.gob.es). They will thus form part of the ‘catalog of digitizing agents’, which already has about 10,200 agents attached and which can be consulted on the official website www.acelerapyme.es.
The digitizing agents are the only ones empowered to sign the ‘digitization solution provision agreements’ with the companies benefiting from the Digital Kit program and digital voucher holders.