Ministry of Finance informs about achievements in facilitating availability of EU funds to entrepreneurship
On Wednesday, September 9, Deputy State Secretary on Foreign Finance Aid Coordination Issues of the Ministry of Finance (MoF) Andžs Ūbelis participated in the meeting of Saeima Economic, Agricultural, Environmental and Regional Policy Committee where participants discussed about availability of European Union (EU) funds to entrepreneurs.
A.Ūbelis reminded about activities already done and planned by the MoF to facilitate implementation of EU projects supporting entrepreneurship in a situation when state budget resources are limited. Deputy State Secretary of the MoF underlined that the MoF as the EU funds managing institution has done its utmost to provide a possibility to entrepreneurs to sign contracts and implement EU projects for support of entrepreneurship.
Already in July, the Cabinet of Ministers (CoM) approved amendments to regulatory acts proposed by the MoF allowing approval and signing of EU fund projects without state co-financing, therefore ensuring a possibility for entrepreneurs to implement projects from their own resources and retrieve them from the European Commission after completion of the project.
Beforehand, responsible ministries or cooperation institutions (agencies) were able to sign contracts with EU funds final beneficiaries only if they had financial resources to perform contractual obligations.
Currently the Law on Budget and Finance Management is in force limiting the amount of undertaken liabilities (signing of EU fund projects) if there is not sufficient amount of resources in the state budget. Since the state budget 2010 has not been approved yet in the CoM and Saeima it is not possible to ensure that the EU financing part repayable to entrepreneurs will be planned in the state budget.
Therefore the MoF asked the Ministry of Economics to inform immediately the CoM about approved EU fund projects on which it is planned to sign contracts and where conceptual decision of the CoM is needed on state budget liabilities to be undertaken. The Ministry will be able to launch projects when necessary amount of financing and revenue from the European Commission will be provided in the state budget.
In the situation when in several EU fund activities of ministries it is planned that state budget expenditure plan will be executed only partially, in the nearest future the MoF will ask the Government to support redistribution of the financing between activities under the competence of different ministries, as well as redistribution of state budget resources between activities under the competence of different ministries. Therefore more effective utilization of state budget resources allocated to ministries in 2009 will be facilitated by channelling state budget resources for EU funded activities where it will be possible to achieve the above mentioned goal.
Measures for simplification of the EU funds acquisition proposed by the MoF resulting in faster finance circulation in projects and eased implementation of projects are available in Latvia on the EU fund home page.
Information prepared by:
Agnese Beļkeviča
Press Division
Phone 67083938
Agnese.Belkevica@fm.gov.lv
