December 1st 2009. Today, the Chairman of Instituto de Crédito Oficial (ICO), José María Ayala Vargas, and the Director General of Community Funds, Mercedes Caballero Fernández, have signed an agreement to signal the start-up of the JEREMIE Fund, a new guarantee facility to provide Spanish small and medium-sized enterprises with prefinancing for R&D&i projects.
Set within the framework of the operative ERDF Programme, the JEREMIE Fund (Joint European Resources for Micro to Medium Enterprises) is part of a European Commission initiative seeking to promote the use of structural funds in the financing of enterprises’ R&D&I activities.
Initially, the fund will be provisioned with €70m. Of this amount, €47.1m will come from the European Union through the Technology Fund and the remainder will be contributed by ICO, which will also be in charge of its management. Its main purpose will be to set up a guarantee facility to offer security to enterprises engaged in R&D&i projects that are eligible for aid from the Spanish Technological and Industrial Development Centre (CDTI), within the scope of the Technology Fund. Thanks to this facility, beneficiary enterprises will be able to access advance finance totalling €490m from the moment their project is set under way.
Territorially speaking, JEREMIE Fund resources will be distributed in the same way as the Technology Fund. This means, amongst other things, that 70% will be allocated to Convergence Target Regions (Andalusia, Castile-La Mancha, Extremadura and Galicia).