The Finance Ministry aims to reactivate a state aid scheme that supports major investments in Romania’s less developed regions, said finance minister Eugen Teodorovici.

The scheme was initially implemented in 2014 and provided state support for investments over EUR 10 million. Teodorovici plans to reduce the threshold to EUR 3 million, local Profit.ro reported.

Another change to the initial form would be to set an annual average allotment for the scheme, and not a maximum amount, thus allowing the use of unspent funds. The finance minister wants to set that average allotment level at RON 638 million (EUR 136 million).

The major objectives of this support scheme are backing important investments, encouraging economic activity expansion in less developed regions and stimulating investments in technology, which eventually lead to jobs creation. The state granted RON 786 million (EUR 175 million) state aid in the scheme to 11 eligible projects that invested RON 2.54 billion (over EUR 550 million) and created 2,494 jobs in 2014-2017.

The finance minister’s intention will be on the Government meeting agenda this week and the allocation for the scheme should be made available after the first budget amendment this year.

editor@romania-insider.com