Opportunities for increasing competitiveness17 April 2008
New applications that can be submitted from 5 May on target increasing the competitiveness of small and medium enterprises and envisage attaining this goal by developing e-commerce and other e-services, as well as by promoting enterprise process management.
Hungarian small and medium enterprises will be able to submit applications from 5 May on under the new calls announced within the framework of the Economic Development Operational Programme (EDOP) and the Central Hungary Operational Programme (CHOP). Significant interest was shown towards both calls for applications last year.
415 applicants applied for funding of 3 billion HUF in value for the development of e-commerce and e-services (EDOP 2.2.3 and CHOP 1.2.7) and plan to implement developments of a total value of 6.6 billion HUF with the help of this funding. 384 applications applying for funding of 3.8 billion HUF in value were submitted in connection with enterprise process management (EDOP 2.2.1 and CHOP 1.2.5) in 2007; project hosts plan to implement developments of 8.8 billion HUF in value with the help of this funding. Therefore, demand for funding considerably exceeded the framework last year, more specifically, by 1.7 billion HUF in the case of e-commerce and 2 billion HUF in the case of enterprise process management.
Decisions on approval have so far been made in the case of a total of nearly 500 applications. Click on the website www.magzrt.hu to view the list of applications approved funding.
The details of the calls for 2008 have not changed since last year. 2 to16 million HUF can be approved per application in the Central Hungary region, whilst 3 to 26 million HUF is available per project in the rest of the (convergence) regions. The maximum rate of funding in Budapest and Pest County is equivalent to a maximum 35% of total costs, whilst, in other regions must not exceed 50% of total costs. However, positive changes have been made to the funding frameworks. In view of the significant interest shown, the National Development Agency has earmarked a total of 2.3 billion HUF for e-commerce and 3.6 billion HUF for enterprise process management in 2008.