Czech Republic to aid small business in Moldova
April 25, 2006Czech Business Weekly, April 24, 2006
The Czech Republic plans to give millions of crowns to support the development of small businesses in Moldova, according to Tomas Haisman, head of the Ministry of the Interior’s department for asylum and migration policy.
The ministry decided last week to release Kc 5.8 million (Euro 203,000) by 2008 to help Moldovans set up their own companies; the idea is to help reduce the number of illegal immigrants in the Czech Republic by improving the situation in their country of origin. Moldava, one of the poorest countries in Europe, was recently ranked 99th out of 111 countries for quality of life by the British magazine The Economist. The World Bank ranks it 69th out of 155 countries for ease of starting a business.
"We organize training sessions for small businesspeople who are starting out. The most successful ones will then gain an advantageous loan to launch their small private companies", Interior Minister Frantisek Bublan said. He added that some 100 people usually apply for the course and up to 10 of them succeed in being granted the loan.
The Ministry of the Interior will earmark Kc 1.8 million (Euro 64,000) for the project this year, and another Kc 2 million (Euro 70,000) in each of 2007 and 2008. The ministry cooperates with Czech and foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that administer courses and loans at the target location.
Haisman said the program is also under way in other countries like Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia, which have been a source of illegal immigrants. The project is a part of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ foreign development cooperation program, as a result of which Kc 750 million (Euro 26 million) have been allocated.
