NWDA launches £10m support fund for SMEs
THE Northwest Regional Development Agency has today launched a fund of at least £10m for small businesses that are suffering because they can’t secure loans from commercial sources, such as banks.
The Transition Loan Fund will allow small businesses to apply for loans between £3,000 and £50,000.
It will be available to those businesses that cannot raise the finance they need but can demonstrate an ability to service the borrowing required.
Beverley Hughes, minister for the North West and chair of the Joint Economic Commission for the North West, which launched the fund, said: “We are in a different place than we were a month ago. The downturn is hitting us now in a way it wasn’t previously.”
To combat this, the joint economic commission for the North West is bringing forward five major capital schemes, which Ms Hughes said will keep construction jobs in the region.
These are: the construction of the five-mile Carlisle Northern Development Route, the city’s western bypass; a new hospital for west Cumbria; the £50m Bolton Innovation Zone college redevelopment; the £300m investment in new infrastructure planned by Greater Manchester Waste Development Authority; and the development of more housing across the North West.
Ms Hughes also said that action would be taken to respond to redundancies in the region, with particular support for young people, which she said were often the first to be hit by redundancies.
“We will be looking to the public sector in quite a significant way to enter into apprenticeships,” she added.
The NWDA said it is also finalising financial support to provide loans of up to £250,000 to businesses, and putting additional investment into its £140m Venture Capital Loan Fund to provide mezzanine and equity funding, which will be available in April 2009.
