The government is investing 200 million euros in the SME Action Plan

Until 2021, the government will invest approximately 200 million euros in tackling bottlenecks in SMEs in the areas of personnel, digitalization and financing.

The so-called SME Action Plan was drawn up in response to an 'SME tour' through the Netherlands by State Secretary Keijzer of Economic Affairs and Climate (EZK). The State Secretary toured the Netherlands and interviewed entrepreneurs in small and medium-sized businesses about the most common problems. The government says that the SME action plan implements the ambitions of the coalition agreement to strengthen the business climate in the Netherlands.

The promised 200 million euros of the Action Plan will be spent on a wide range of measures on the themes of human capital (Technology Pact, talent programs), financing (increasing the maximum SEED, scaling up regional financing tables, encouraging alternative financing, timely payments), digitalization, application of innovation (increasing MIT, Innovation Credit, SBIR) and for regional cooperation (scaling up regional best practices of initiatives for broad SMEs).

The central government mentions the following concrete action points and measures:

• Human capital: projects such as Cash in on your talent, MKB!dee and Katapult: connecting students and companies. Intensification of approximately 25 million euros.
• Program to accelerate digitalization of SMEs, starting with regional practical tests. Approximately 31 million euros will be allocated over four years for this acceleration project and the cybersecurity approach.
• Access to appropriate financing with so-called regional financing tables.
• Intensification of other financial instruments, such as SEED: more than 16 million euros.
• Increasing budgets for innovation and knowledge sharing, such as MIT, SBIR, Innovation Credit and the start of Thematic Technology Transfer, totaling approximately 123 million euros.
• SME test to limit regulatory burden and structural consultation with entrepreneurs about this.

SME cooperation agenda

The government has also drawn up the SME cooperation agenda. The region is central to this. Since 2015, Economic Affairs, provinces, SME Netherlands and the Top Sectors have been working together on the basis of the SME cooperation agenda. The current SME cooperation agenda has been updated for 2018-2019. One of the agreements in the agenda is that Economic Affairs and the provinces together, via the MIT scheme, will release approximately 64 million euros per year for innovative ideas from SME entrepreneurs.