New Széchenyi Plan Opens HUF 200 Billion Funding Within Two Months for Social Renewal Plan2012. február 17.
As a result of the simplification and acceleration processes, the National Development Agency (NDA) has opened the remaining funds of the Social Renewal Operational Programme (SROP) available for the 2007-2013 planning period and in parallel of the Social Infrastructure Operational Programme (SIOP) in order to help the successful withdrawal of EU funds. The two operational programs have provided calls for application with a budget of approximately HUF 200 billion in the past two months. This year a further amount of over HUF 63 billion will be available for applications.
Within the New Széchenyi Plan, the SROP will rely on co-financing by the European Social Fund (ESF) to contribute to the increase of employment primarily with measures aimed at the supply side of the labour market and with human resource development. The overall aim of SROP is to increase labour market participation. The Government wants to achieve this by improving human resource quality. This calls for the tools of employment, education and training, social security, healthcare, culture and public education, as well as anti-discrimination tools. At the same time, operating with co-financing by the ERDF (European Regional Development Fund), the SIOP will provide infrastructure as a background to SROP and will create an opportunity for asset and property investments to increase the quality of education and training, healthcare, and labour market and social services.
The Government is confident that the HUF 200 billion budget will be fully used. In any case, the recent results are encouraging: several measures have been taken in this matter since June 2010: a common rule of procedure was made, the tendering procedure was simplified and accelerated, and the set dates for payment were reduced. The Government also changed its approach to tender assessment; currently all development funds are meant to boost the economy. The changes have significantly increased not only payments but also the willingness to submit applications in the past one and a half years.
The amount of payments has significantly increased in the past one and a half years, being four times as much as the previous average of HUF 5.5 billion per week.
Source: NDA