The coronavirus has hit the startup ecosystem hard across the world! Many startups are not able to operate due to lockdown while others are witnessing losses due to lack of revenue. Many businesses have urged their respective government to announce a robust economic package to fuel recovery.
€25 million relief package!
Fortunately, governments around the world are announcing measures to support SMEs. Recently, the Portugal government has announced a package of €25 million in a bid to protect the country’s tech and startup ecosystem.
“The set of five new measures, with a value of more than 25 million euros, could represent an average of 10,000 euros of potential support for each startup,” the Ministry of Economy and Digital Transition said in a statement.
Package will cover financial support!
This comes after a week of talks with the pop-up movement #tech4covid19, representing accelerators, founders, and investors. The announced package is expected to cover various financial supports including, company financing, employee incentives, social innovation investment fund, and a fund offering co-investment with private investors.
While some founders are worried about the pace of the process, the government has assured that they are working hard to design measures that can have an immediate impact. It’s worth mentioning that the entire country has been under emergency since March.
At the time of writing this article, Portugal has registered 21,982 COVID-19 cases, with 785 deaths and 1,143 recoveries.
A couple of days back, the UK government has announced a new scheme to issue convertible loans to innovative companies that are facing financing difficulties due to the coronavirus outbreak: the Future Fund. According to the official news, the Government will initially make up to £250,000,000 available in total for the scheme.
Main image credits: Konstantin Egorychev/Shutterstock
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