Around 2000 Startups have been Created in Bulgaria for 5 Years

About 2000 start-ups have been set up in the past five years in Bulgaria. About half still exist and 40% have received further funding from investment funds. This was announced by Deputy Minister of Economy Alexander Manolev in the presentation of the "Promotion of Entrepreneurship" procedure of the Operational Program "Innovation and Competitiveness" in Plovdiv.

The budget of the procedure is BGN 67 million. It is expected to finance more than 350 projects. The grant for each of them will be up to BGN 200 thousand. Right to apply have startups created after December 31, 2016, said Alexander Manolev.

He pointed out that interest in the scheme was serious. Experts' expectations are within the scope of application to receive over 2000 project proposals.

"I expect the experts' forecast to be true because the more the projects are, the higher the quality of the winners," Manolev commented.

To date, more than 700 million BGN have been paid under Operational Program "Innovation and Competitiveness". 1850 contracts amounting to BGN 1.7 billion were concluded.

Plovdiv is one of the regions that show very good results in the work with the European projects, and for the last programming period of Operational Program Competitiveness, 302 grant contracts have been executed, amounting to more than BGN 200 mln.

Not less is the interest during the current programming period of the Innovation and Competitiveness Program. So far, over 170 million levs have been signed in the region, and more than half of them have already been successfully utilized, it became clear during the event.

"This shows that the Bulgarian startups are sustainable and I really hope that with the procedure that we are launching, we will give another impetus for their development," added Alexander Manolev.

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