47 contracts for European funds concluded by Regional Development Agency Centru

Ovidiu Vrânceanu,Braşov

Regional Development Agency 7 (ADR) Centru of Alba Iulia, which covers the counties of Braşov, Alba, Mureş, Covasna, Harghita and Sibiu, has signed financing agreements with 47 small companies in the region. Regional Development Agency Centru 7 serves as a proxy for the Regional Operational Program. Contracts with 24 other small enterprises whose projects passed all the stages of the evaluation, will be signed soon.

The projects which received funding were submitted last year on the major intervention sector 4.3 of the Regional Operational Program - REGIO, intended exclusively to support the development of small enterprises.

Projects worth more than 24.56 million lei were approved so far, of which 13.74 million lei represent grants from the European Union and the Romanian Government.

The 12 small enterprises which signed the funding contracts between 12-16 June 2009 were invited to participate in a seminar on the obligations that have they have to comply with in order to receive the funding. The General Manager of ADR Centru, Simion Creţu, said: "This is the only sector for which we are accepting applications for grants from small urban enterprises. After the signing of all the funding contracts for the projects submitted by small and medium enterprises last year, both for the Centru Region, as well as for the other regions of the country, we estimate a new session of accepting applications for sector 4.3. The list of projects in this sector for which contracts were signed, as well as for other sectors, is permanently updated and is available on the website of ADR Centru".

Over EUR 24 million are still available for grants for this sector.

Small and medium enterprises interested in attracting grants of up to EUR 200,000 can monitor the website of ADR Centru 7 in order to be notified when the agency starts accepting applications for this sector again, and also to download the relevant documents that need to be filled out when applying for funding.