European Commission to Support SMEs and Entrepreneurship in Ukraine

At the International Conference on Support for Ukraine the EU announced it will allocate €110 million to support SMEs and entrepreneurship in Ukraine. €70 million will represent the Special Measure for Private Sector Development and Approximation, and €40 million a loan guarantee facility from the Neighbourhood Investment Facility.

European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Commissioner, Johannes Hahn, said: "The development of small and medium enterprises (SME) has a crucial role to play in creating growth and job opportunities. By supporting an enabling environment to invest, by providing business development services at regional level and by addressing some of the obstacles to SME development such as access to finance, the EU is contributing to economic recovery, in particular in the regions most affected by the need to integrate internally displaced persons”.

Out of the total amount, €95 million will aim at supporting the national, regional and local authorities and other stakeholders to develop and implement effective economic development and SMEs policies. The €15 million left will be allocated to facilitating technical cooperation. The objective is to effectively raise the capacities of the Ukrainian public authorities in designing and implementing key reforms in the areas of governance, economic governance, and trade. It will include statistics, technical barriers to trade and financial services, transport and energy.

European Commission Press release