EU offering €150,000 in grants for green, digital projects

Businesses in Guyana and across the CARIFORUM region can access up to €100,000 in grants for green transition projects and €50,000 for digital transformation initiatives under the European Union’s Global Gateway BRIDGE programme.

The funding opportunities were outlined as Global Gateway and the Caribbean Export Development Agency opened a two-day capacity-building workshop at the Pegasus Hotel in Georgetown on Thursday.

The event, themed “Leveraging the CARIFORUM-EU Economic Partnership: Expanding Trade and Accessing Finance for Growth with BRIDGE (Building Resilient Innovation for Digital and Green Enterprises),” aims to strengthen business planning skills and enhance knowledge of financing options available to small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs).

Manager for Technical Programmes at the Caribbean Export Development Agency, Wayne Elliott, shared some insights into the event.

“Over the next two days, we’ll be partnering with the GO-Invest as well as the European Union to host a workshop that’s gonna speak to the benefits of the EU CARIFORUM- Economic partnership agreement. Today, the first day, we’re going to focus on all the details of that agreement, what benefits there are and how you can benefit the over 420 million consumers in the European market unfettered. Which means duty-free, quota-free for Caribbean firms,” he shared.

Elliott added that tomorrow’s focus will be access to finance, where financial institutions in Guyana will deliver on the benefits of products and services available for both the Guyanese and Caribbean markets.

“We’re also gonna be speaking a lot about our BRIDGE grants, a grant funded by the European Union under the Global Gateway programme. Firms in the CARIFORUM- Guyanese firms, they have access to up to $100,000 Euros for the green transition projects as well as up to $50,000 Euros for your digital transformation projects. Tomorrow we’ll be going through the eligibility criteria, what’s needed, how you can access it, and some of the tips and tricks to ensure that you send your best proposals,” he explained.

The event concludes tomorrow with remarks from Ambassador of the European Union Delegation to Guyana, Luca Pierantoni.