The government has decided to double the original limit of the “Hungarian High-tech and Green” scheme that supports technology upgrades by SMEs to 100 billion forints (EUR 289.9m) as applications have been received for more than double the 50 billion forints, Finance Minister Mihály Varga said after the meeting of the economic cabinet.
More than 4,500 companies have submitted applications for a combined 105 billion forints in funding.
The government called tenders in the middle of May for a total of about 52 billion forints of money it rechannelled from EU programmes earmarked for economic developments, as part of a broader plan to protect against the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. The grant money may cover up to 70% of efficiency-boosting investment costs at microbusinesses and SMEs that pledge to keep at least 90% of their employees on payroll.
The funding in the scheme is available to SMEs in Budapest and Pest County – where GDP per capita is nearly one-and-a-half times the EU average – as well as in the rest of the country. Application amounts are linked to headcount and stand at 1.5 million forints per employee at businesses with 1-9 people on the payroll, at 1 million forints per employee at companies with a headcount between 10 and 49, and at 500,000 forints per employee at companies with staff numbers between 50 and 249.
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