Minister: First Support Funds for Tourism Enterprises Next Month

Alternate Development & Investments Minister Yannis Tsakiris announced this week that the first funds to tourism enterprises seeking support will be released in the first days of September.

“In the beginning of September, the first payments will be made to tourism companies that have submitted an application as part of a relevant NSRF program,” he said in an interview with OPEN television.

He said that more than 30,000 applications for support have been submitted from businesses – 11,000 in tourism – seeking to tap into some 250 million euros in resources. Tsakiris said disbursement had already started for F&B services companies.

The minister went on to add that approval and funding procedures had been accelerated for the so-called ESPA programs.

“Everything is done electronically and we have managed to achieve payment [disbursement] within a month of inclusion,” he said.

Tsakiris said the same would apply to the new ESPA program and that the market would not experience a “funding gap”. In this direction, the minister referred to an upcoming 4-billion-euro scheme to support small and medium-sized enterprises.

Greece, he said, was among the first countries to submit a plan for the new round of EU funding, approved earlier this year by the European Commission, and is awaiting approval in September of submitted plans in order to cover new activities.

On a final note, Tsakiris said the NSRF fund contributed greatly to the country’s efforts to address the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and to the recovery of the economy, adding that absorption rates went from 25-26 percent to nearly 70 percent in the last two years.