October 15 (SeeNews) - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said it is providing a 40 million euro ($44.1 million) credit line to the Serbian units of UniCredit and Banca Intesa to back local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Borrowers will be able to benefit from European Union (EU) grant incentives worth 15% of the total investment to boost their competitiveness, the EBRD said in a statement on Monday.
"One of the main challenges to joining the EU is to improve the competitiveness of the local economy so that it can compete with EU countries. This programme does exactly that; it helps Serbian firms to get closer in terms of quality and standards to their EU counterparts," Zsuzsanna Hargitai, EBRD Regional Director, Western Balkans, said in the statement.
The programme was developed to assist private small firms to achieve compliance with EU directives, particularly in the fields of environmental protection, occupational health and safety and product quality and safety. On successful completion of the investment project, SMEs will be eligible for a cashback grant of 15%, which will significantly reduce the costs of their investments, the EBRD said.
"The European Union is committed to assisting Serbia in providing incentives for the companies to start, grow and expand regionally and internationally. There are challenges that limit the competitiveness of private enterprises and we work in partnership to overcome these," Michael Voegele, Western Balkans Investment Framework’s Team Leader at the European Commission, explained.
Serbia started accession talks with the EU in January 2014 and has already opened more than half of the 35 chapters of the EU body of law, two of which were provisionally closed.
The EBRD has invested more than 5 billion euro across 250 projects in Serbia to date.
($ = 0.907146 euro)
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