Red.es opens a new call for grants for 24 M€ to create Acelera SME offices in rural areas

Red.es - a public business entity attached to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, through the Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence - has opened a new call for grants to expand the network of Offices Acelera SMEs throughout the national territory.

The objective of this call is to reach municipalities with populations below 20,000 inhabitants and promote there the adoption of digital technologies by their SMEs, self-employed and entrepreneurs. Acelera SME is a program that seeks to help them in their digital transformation and, with it, the transformation of the economy and society towards a digital environment, contributing to the maintenance of the rural population in the context of the demographic challenge.

This is one of the measures framed in the Digital Spain Agenda 2025 and in the Digitalization Plan for SMEs that is part of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.

The budget of the call is 23.8 million euros and the amount of aid for each of the offices ranges between 300,000 and 410,000 euros for 2 years, which is 80% of the project budget.

Professional and business associations, professional associations, technological centres and technological innovation support centres, provincial deputies, autonomous uniprovincial communities, island councils and councils, and districts, townships of municipalities or other entities that group several municipalities will be eligible for assistance. Each applicant entity will be able to submit a single project per territory, being able to submit up to three projects for different territories.

The physical offices must be located in the territory in which the Accelerating SME Office carries out its activity, and there may be more than one physical location of the office in different points of the territory. Territory means the physical space comprising a province, except for the island autonomous communities that have their own island council or council, for which territory means the physical space comprising each of the islands that make up them. The projects submitted will be associated with the provision of services in the territory selected in the application.

All actions and services must be framed in the promotion of the process of incorporating innovative technologies of the users of the actions. Actions or services that do not contribute to this objective shall not be subsidised. Furthermore, no training actions will be subsidised.

They must be both a physical and virtual point for resolving doubts to users in their digital transformation processes and for carrying out awareness-raising and support actions in this field. In addition, they must keep a digitized record of the users of the services they offer and will provide advisory services to users in the application for national, regional and local aid to business development and digital transformation.

The entities interested in applying for this aid will have two months to submit their application from the date of publication in the Official State Gazette and can do so through the form enabled in the Electronic Headquarters of Red.es http://sede.red.gob.es, where all the information can be consulted.

The projects will be co-financed from the funds from the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism within the European Recovery Instrument (Next Generation EU), in accordance with the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.

This call includes the creation of around 50 new Acelera SME offices, with a minimum of one office per province and/or island and a maximum of two.

The new offices will be added to the 90 that make up the Network of Offices Acelera SME that Red.es is launching throughout the territory, and will represent a total of almost 150 offices that will support the digital transformation of SMEs, self-employed and entrepreneurs throughout Spain. This represents a further step in the development of the strategic lines of the Digital Spain Agenda 2025.

This Network of Offices Acelera SME will also be in charge of advising and helping small businesses, micro-enterprises and self-employed people in everything related to the procedures of the Digital Kit program.

Kit Digital is a program of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, framed in the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, and was born to accompany SMEs and self-employed people in their digital transformation process.

With a budget of more than 3 billion euros, this program aims to promote the digitization of 1 million SMEs and self-employed workers, especially targeting small businesses, micro-enterprises and the self-employed.

The Acelera SME offices are a physical and virtual space in which work is carried out to sensitize and support Spanish companies (including new ones), especially small and medium-sized enterprises, self-employed and entrepreneurs, on the advantages and innovative methodologies to optimize the operation of their businesses, through the incorporation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in their processes, so as to favor the demand for innovative technologies that contribute to the improvement of their productivity.

The subsidized projects include, among others, the start-up of the SME Accelerator Office; the generation, dissemination and valorisation of content associated with the adoption of technologies and processes; actions to raise awareness and support to SMEs on innovative methodologies and technologies by promoting their incorporation in their production and management processes; and actions of advice and support in the main areas of digital transformation. It also includes face-to-face actions that will be held in municipalities of less than 20,000 inhabitants and at least 60% of the group activities proposed by the Office Acelera SME must be in face-to-face or mixed mode, as well as causes of force majeure.

More information: press@red.es