The Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism allocates 215 million euros to programmes supporting the ICT and digital content sector

The Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism plans in 2015 to invest more than 215 million euros in financing instruments and aid programmes for the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and digital content sector.

The head of the State Secretariat for Telecommunications and the Information Society (SETSI), Víctor Calvo-Sotelo, today presented a package of measures that form part of the Digital Agenda for Spain, including a major process of streamlining public instruments. The measures aim to improve the impact on the sector, increase the efficiency of public funds, adapt them to the needs of each company according to its maturity and stage of development and optimise the control of technical and financial risks.

These actions constitute the first phase of an initiative designed to increase coordination between public and private bodies, in particular, with the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Competitiveness, through the Framework Collaboration Agreement on R&D+i for the ICT sector signed in October 2014.

The new strategy organises and structures actions such as the 1/2015 call for R&D grant applications, the ENISA 2015 Digital Agenda line and the programmes of the public enterprise Red.es to avoid inefficiency and optimise impact.

Call for R&D aid applications: subsidies and loans

The 1/2015 call for aid applications for R&D projects in the ICT and digital content sector, with a budget of 200 million euros co-financed with ERDF funds, is also part of this strategy.

The aid aims to create incentives for implementing individual R&D projects through two different sub-programmes:

• The Technology Boost sub-programme. This has a budget of 140 million euros targeted at boosting Spanish and international projects with budgets ranging between 200,000 and 2 million euros, based on technologies with a low level of maturity and high potential for transformation in the ICT sector.
• • Large Projects sub-programme. With a budget of 60 million euros, this is targeted at projects with a minimum subcontracting of 25% and budgets of between 2 million and 10 million euros, with a high technological value and high potential for socioeconomic traction and impact..

This call for aid applications will promote R&D in key technologies that help digitise the Spanish industrial sector (Industry 4.0), the development of smart cities and the future deployment of 5G and the Internet of Things, which are priority strategies in this ministerial department.

ENISA 2015 Digital Agenda: financing innovation

One of the new points presented today by the State Secretary for Telecommunications and the Information Society is the ENISA 2015 Digital Agenda line targeted at the digital content sector (audiovisual products, music, digital publications, videogames, mobile applications...), the infomedia sector and industries of the future.

This initiative has a budget of 15 million euros, and is aimed at boosting innovative proposals headed by young or new companies by providing finance through participative credits in advantageous conditions without guarantees.

New policy and aid management system

The latest of the main new points in 2015 is the adoption of a new ICT Aid Management Policy, which will be the strategic, procedural and governance benchmark for the processes of managing public aid by the SETSI.

The new Aid Management System is the result of a process of public reengineering, and provides new instruments for the execution of aid programmes.

Among the new instruments are the incorporation of the National Agency for Business Evaluation and Prospecting (Spanish acronym: ANEP) in the process of evaluating the technical innovation of projects; the adoption of credit rating procedures for applicants to evaluate their financial solvency and determine the guarantees needed; and, also very important, the strengthening of the monitoring system for projects with new schemes of control and technical audit that will supervise the investments made by beneficiaries more rigorously and effectively.