SMEs and midcaps to receive 250 million euros from a credit line signed by the European Investment Bank and ICO

During the official signing of the agreement, the State Secretary for Public Administration Services, Antonio Beteta, stressed that the Government will not leave new entrepreneurs and businesspeople that create companies to fend for themselves. He insisted that "financing operations such as these are also necessary right now at the growth and job creation phase."

The Government has been supporting these kinds of operations with companies, given the obviously important role they play in economic growth and job creation. It is a further step in supporting entrepreneurs, the self-employed and small businesses, in the wake of measures such as the Financing Fund for Supplier Payment, the Regional Liquidity Fund and the new Financial Facility, with a total of 72.19 billion euros paid directly to suppliers so far.

Together with structural measures such as the Fundamental Law on the Control of Commercial Debt and the Law on E-Invoicing they lay new foundations for protecting companies so that a stable and secure relationship with the public administrations can be preserved. This all forms part of a new productive model that stresses the development of business activity based on support to small businesses and entrepreneurs, as pillars of job creation in Spain.

Through the extraordinary payment mechanism for regional governments to suppliers a total of 30.22 billion euros has been paid for 5,919,154 invoices from 67,129 suppliers.

The extraordinary payment mechanism for local authorities to suppliers has led to payment of 2,097,357 invoices to 123,733 local suppliers for a total of 11,595 million euros.

The Regional Liquidity Fund has led to the payment of 25.63 billion euros for a total of 1,394,087 invoices from 61,451 suppliers.

This support has already led to results, as shown by the GDP growth figures in the first quarter, the fall of 120,000 in the number of unemployed in April and growth of 12.5% in our exports. More specifically, the macroeconomic impact of these financing mechanisms has resulted in the injection of liquidity at very high levels, which was particularly important while credit was squeezed during the crisis. They are estimated to have maintained or created around 400,000 jobs and increased the level of GDP by 3% in the medium term.

Antonio Beteta concluded that if the exit from the crisis is to be structural and not short-term there has to be support for companies "because the future of job creation is based on strong and healthy SMEs with a commitment to internationalisation."