The Regional Government, through the Vice-Presidency, has already regulated the implementation of changes in the number of payment requests and their minimum percentage under the Competir+ Investment Incentive Scheme with the aim of increasing the liquidity support for Azorean companies.
The new measure strengthens the Regional Government's support to help regional companies facing this period of significant decrease in economic activity arising from the necessary social distancing. In this regard, the Government has already published a resolution anticipating the payment of financial support approved under the Competir+ Incentive Scheme.
Up to now, companies could only submit a maximum of six incentive payment requests, corresponding to a minimum investment amount of 10% in the case of interim payment requests and 15% in the final payment request.
With the amendment now published by Resolution no. 93/2020, the maximum number of incentive payment requests is increased to 10, whose minimum value must correspond to 5% of the investment, in the case of interim requests, and 10% in the request final payment.
The implementation of this measure will enable companies with projects approved under the Competir+ incentive system to have already incurred expenses co-financed more quickly than anticipated, thus representing another available financial tool and an additional effort undertaken by the Regional Government to strengthen their liquidity.
The injection of liquidity into the economy has been a constant concern of the Regional Government. In fact, it has already implemented other measures under SIDER and Competir+ incentive systems, namely by suspending the repayment of Competir+ and SIDER incentive instalments due this year and postponing them for a period of 12 months.
Hence, until the end of 2020, all companies will have the possibility of channelling these funds to other components of their daily activity instead of repaying refundable incentives.
All these measures correspond to the continuous effort of the Regional Government to support the economy and companies, providing a decisive contribution to their financing through the most varied forms of support that have been recently implemented, including this new measure.