Additional €2 million for BOV’s Jeremie scheme for SMEs

Small and medium businesses can now benefit from a total of €11 million in preferential loans via the Jeremie financing package, deputy prime minister Louis Grech announced today.

Bank of Valletta was appointed by the European Investment Fund (EIF) as the sole Maltese financial intermediary for the management of the Jeremie Initiative (Joint European Resources for Micro to Medium Enterprises).

During the signing of the agreement, Grech said the initiative could provide assistance to around 100 SMEs.

The first agreement with the EIF was signed between parliamentary secretary for EU funds Ian Borg and the EIF's secretary general Maria Leander.

The second agreement, that between the EIF and BOV was signed by the bank's chairman, John Cassar White.

By end of June, 602 Loan Facilities were granted to 533 SMEs for the value of €48.6million.

This investment is calculated to have given rise to an €83.5 million investment within the economy.

Grech said the success of the first trance of the Jeremie allocation was so evident, that a decision was made to top up the fund by an additional €2 million.

"Once that decision was taken, the EIF acted expediently to make this possible and we thank them for that."

According to Grech, the success story behind Jeremie Malta was to have the right partner: "In this regard BoV have shown a commitment to deliver and have made this experiment a success."

Grech said the government was committed in supporting SMEs, the backbone of the Maltese economy.

"Looking forward to the 2014-2020 programming, it is evident that Financial Engineering has an important role to play. Indeed discussions are ongoing on how to create the best possible financial instrument to cater for the Maltese reality."

Borg also mentioned the utilization of more financial engineering instruments in the coming years. He said the Maltese Authorities had already contracted the EIF to carry out an ex-ante assessment in preparation of Financial Engineering (FE) instruments to be included in the programming period 2014-2020.