Bulgaria to Back Financially SMEs Going Public
Bulgaria's economy ministry said on Friday it has launched a voucher scheme under which small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that go public will get a grant of 50,000 levs ($29,700/25,600 euro) to cover their listing expenses."Eighty-one percent of public companies on the Bulgarian stock exchange are SMEs. I am convinced that this voucher initiative will further encourage such companies to raise capital through the stock exchange in order to invest in their development and growth," Vassil Golemanski, CEO of the Bulgarian Stock Exchange, said as quoted in an economy ministry statement.A bourse listing will be considered successful if the capital it raises exceeds at least tenfold the value of the voucher, deputy economy minister Alexander Manolev said in the statement.The voucher scheme is expected to prompt at least 32 companies to go public, resulting in 15 million levs of investments in SMEs via listings.The initiative has a total budget of 1.6 million levs.(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)