Small and medium-sized enterprises filed projects which request financing worth €14.1 million from European funds for the implementation of business management IT systems and the development of online solutions. The sum is only 56 percent of the total available amount, of €24.9 mln. “This is the maximum absorption rate for this field. At the moment, we cannot estimate the long-term absorption rate, because the period for the scheduling of Structural Funds will end in 2013,” said Victor Panzaru, General Manager for Structural Funds within the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. A total of 238 companies filed projects to finance their investments in IT systems and online solutions, including Lasting Systems, a company operating in the IT field, Avitech, an integrated solution provider for the audio-video fields, Brinel, an IT solution supplier, and Eta2U, an IT product and service provider. Lasting Systems, with business worth €27.5 mln, filed a project to obtain some €10,000. “We began compiling the project one month before filing it. The only expenses required for the development and filing of the project were those related to human resources involved, all of which were group employees,” said Horatiu Covlescu, the company’s Marketing Manager. The period for filing the projects was 2 September - 12 December 2008. Regarding the calls for projects launched in the first major field of intervention, which refers to the support for the IT use, the absorption rate is estimated to be 80 percent. For the development and growth of efficiency of electronic public services, the accessing rate is estimated to be 100 percent. For all three major fields of intervention there are €383 million available, plus the contributions from the state budget, which raises the amount to over €450 mln.
