By Scott Wright
GRANT support worth up to £140 million will be provided to Scottish businesses between now and March, helping to create and safeguard more than 9,000 jobs.
The funding will be provided by Scottish Enterprise, the country’s main economic development agency, in the form of support for up to 160 new company projects. The grants, which will be given to companies in industries such as renewables, technology, engineering, manufacturing and life sciences, will start at £100,000, with some rising to several million pounds.
Scottish Enterprise believes the funding, which will be rolled out over the next two to three years, will have the potential to unlock up to £500m of investment by businesses into the Scottish economy, aiding the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. The bulk of the awards will be made to domestic businesses, with the rest securing new inward investment.
Linda Hanna, interim chief executive of Scottish Enterprise, said: “We’ve been working with partners to address the immediate economic impact of Covid-19 while preparing to help businesses recover and rebuild. Demand for our large grant products has grown to unprecedented levels, indicating that companies operating in Scotland still have their sights set on growth, despite the pandemic.
“We want to support as many of them as possible. This programme of large grant support does that by stimulating investment in our economy that will enable businesses to realise long-held growth ambitions and create jobs.”
Research and development projects, and investment in machinery and equipment to aid the transition to a net-zero economy, will be among the activities funded. The full list of awards will be published on the Scottish Enterprise website in April.
Economy Secretary Fiona Hyslop said: “This grant support for Scottish businesses and inward investors will help rebuild the economy after the damage caused by Covid-19.”
“This funding will support our growth companies and give them the potential to prosper. This is a key part of our long-term mission to create new jobs, good jobs and green jobs.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here