Romania's Start-Up Nation program to have EUR 430 mln budget this year

The second edition of the Start-Up Nation program, a state-aid scheme aimed at helping local start-ups, will have a budget of RON 2 billion (EUR 430 million) and will be able to finance some 10,000 local start-ups. The maximum financing will be RON 200,000 (EUR 43,000) per firm and will cover up to 100% of the eligible expenses. However, the new program will start only after the Government finishes the payments for last year’s edition of the program, according to business environment minister Radu Oprea, local Agerpres reported. Last year, about 8,600 local firms were accepted for financing in this program. However, only about 1,300 of them have received the payments. The state regional agencies in charge with implementing the program are looking to accelerate the payments but many winning firms haven’t made the payment requests yet. The deadline for submitting payment requests is September 29 and the deadline for payments is end-December. Almost 1,300 Romanian start-ups get state financing in nine months editor@romania-insider.com