The Heraklion Chamber expresses its satisfaction with yesterday’s decision of the Ministry of Finance to increase the budget of the action “Support for the Establishment and Operation of New Tourism SMEs” from 160 million euros to 250 million euros of public expenditure.
The request for this specific increase was one of the central points of the recent letter of the Heraklion Chamber to the Alternate Minister of Development and Investments, Mr. Nikos Papathanasis, as well as of the discussion during the visit of the President of the Heraklion Chamber, Mr. Vangelis Karkanakis to the Secretary General for the Management of Sectoral Programs of the ERDF, CF and ESF, Mr. Giorgos Zervos.
With this double intervention, Mr. Karkanakis emphasized the need to increase the relevant public expenditure, given the great market response, as 6,669 applications were submitted with a total requested budget of 2.3 billion euros and public expenditure of over 1.2 billion euros.
The Action concerns the strengthening of tourism entrepreneurship through the creation of new very small, small and medium-sized enterprises in selected tourism activities, encouraging the creation of new enterprises that, in addition to their contribution to increasing the capacity of the Greek tourism industry, will offer quality and reliable services and will contribute to the enrichment of the tourism product, as well as to increasing employment.
“Given that only one of the eight submitted proposals could be approved with the initial budget, this increase is a positive step, but not sufficient. “The need to further increase resources remains imperative, in order to cover as many quality and sustainable business projects as possible,” Mr. Karkanakis said in a statement and stressed that the Heraklion Chamber will continue to actively support the claim for additional resources, aiming at the maximum possible utilization of public and community funds for the benefit of the local and national economy.
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