Taking into account the current pandemic situation and the constrains and negative impacts brought by COVID-19, the Regional Operational Programme of Centro (Centro 2020), in cooperation with the remaining Operational Programmes of Portugal 2020, has launched, on the 22nd of April two calls to support companies and scientific & technological Institutions.
These calls mobilise €11 million from Centro 2020, through ERDF, and seek at funding projects that answer to the immediate and medium-term needs of the National Health Service, as well as projects that allow to address the increasing need of specific products and services to fight COVID-19.
1. Call: €7 million, aims at supporting companies that want to establish, reinforce or reverse their productive capacity to start producing goods and services designed to fight COVID-19.
2. Call: €4 million, has as objective to mobilise technical and scientific resources for the creation of new products, processes and systems, or to implement significant improvements in the already existing ones. This call will also support the construction or modernisation of test infrastructures and the optimisation needed for the development of relevant products.
It is also worth mentioning that, within the scope of Portugal 2020 and the Cohesion Policy Funds, some management measures have been approved to reduce and mitigate the negative economic impacts of COVID-19. Among these measures is reimbursing companies within 30 days, at the most (even if it doesn’t allow the verification of the expenses, in which case the payment is made in advance and verified later), the automatic deferral of reimbursements of loans by project promoters and the payment of expenses related to national and international meetings and events that were cancelled due to COVID-19.
More details on these measures can be found HERE.
