The Government launches a consultation to identify proposals for the efficient deployment of the plan for the digitalization of SMEs and self-employed workers

The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation has today published a request for expressions of interest to receive proposals for financing and provision of services for the digitization of SMEs and self-employed people.

This request is framed in the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan and on the agenda Spain Digital 2025, which has the digitalisation of the company as one of its ten strategic axes, highlighting the important role of promoting the digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises.

This axis is developed through the Digitalization Plan for SMEs 2021-2025, which will mobilize almost 5 billion euros until 2023 to offer support to SMEs and self-employed people throughout their digitalization process. This plan aims to impact the digitalization processes of 1.5 million companies and businesses.

For this, the SME Digitalization Plan It includes a set of programs and mechanisms among which the Digital Toolkit Program (DTK) stands out. This program has a budget of 3 billion euros in grants, aimed at the adoption by SMEs of digitization packages already existing in the field of digital marketing, electronic commerce or digital business administration (presence on the Internet, electronic sales, digital customer management, digital office, logistics and digital warehouses, etc. ).

In addition, the Plan incorporates other programs aimed at training managers and employees of SMEs, hiring digital transformation experts who act as agents of change in SMEs or subsidizing connectivity and cybersecurity bonds.

To facilitate the implementation of these programs, the program and the AceleraSme portal will be reformed, making it the national reference hub to offer services to support the digitization of SMEs and self-employed, allowing them to access packages of tools and basic services oriented to awareness, advice and support throughout the entire digitization process, depending on their needs. Companies will be able to access AceleraSme both from a digital platform and through a network of more than 100 offices distributed throughout the Spanish geography, in collaboration with the Chamber of Spain.

In order to ensure the rapid, massive and transparent execution of the digitization programs of SMEs and self-employed people, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation launches an invitation, which aims to identify specific instruments, actions or public-private collaboration schemes to achieve the objectives set, especially through the Digital Toolkit Program.

The consultation is open to all SMEs and self-employed people, as well as their representative associations, and all types of actors involved in the digitisation process, private and public, especially those who can perform the functions of facilitators and digitisation agents, in line with the provisions of the SME Digitisation Plan 2021-2025.

In particular, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation is particularly interested in collecting proposals from private or public-private consortiums that allow to deploy projects that have a large scale and granularity throughout the territory to achieve a high impact for SMEs (gains in business activity and productivity, jobs created in Spain, etc. ).

All the contributions presented, both individually and on behalf of a consortium, that are received until May 7, 2021 and issued through the form published in the following link.

Once the deadline for the reception of expressions of interest is over, the proposals presented will be analyzed, in order to deploy the most appropriate instruments of aid and public-private collaboration.

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