Minister of Economy: First companies to receive money from gov't as grants in the next three days

The first companies to receive money in the next three days from the government as grants for their problems generated by the Covid-19 crisis were announced on Wednesday by the Minister of Economy, Energy and Business Environment, Virgil Popescu, in a press conference.

"Today [Wednesday - editor's note] we have on the government's agenda the emergency ordinance which will supplement from one billion to 1.5 billion euros the budget for the grants offered to SMEs under the three measures, so that all those who submitted applications under measure 1 and measure 2 can be financed," said Popescu.

He said that more than 29,000 companies had registered for measure 1 and more than 22,000 for measure 2.

He pointed out that this is the second ambitious IT application of the ministry, after the certificates for emergency situations.

Next week, after the modification of GEO 130, measure 3, the one regarding investments, will also be launched, the minister added.

On November 12, the Government approved, in first reading, the draft emergency ordinance supplementing the budget allocated for the working capital grants programme for companies affected by COVID-19 with the amount of 500 million euros, said the Head of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, Ionel Danca.