The Diplomat
ICEX Spain Export and Investment is going to support with almost five million euros the development in Spain of activities with a high innovative component by companies with foreign capital.
ICEX, through Invest in Spain, has launched the second call of the Innova Invest program, whose objective is the promotion of R&D activities in Spain by companies with at least 50% foreign capital, as reported last Thursday by the state entity dedicated to the promotion of foreign direct investment (FDI) in our country.
This new call of the program, which aims to integrate these companies into the national productive and research fabric so that they contribute to the improvement of the competitiveness and productivity of the Spanish economy, is endowed with 5.1 million euros.
The Innova Invest program, which is part of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, consists of a line of aid in the form of grants of up to 800,000 euros per beneficiary. The minimum amount of all eligible items included in each application must be at least 500,000 euros. The projects must be carried out in Spain during a period of 18 months.
The aid will be granted to the expenses of industrial research or experimental development projects included in the eligible items, which include the costs of personnel, instruments and material, buildings and land, contractual research, knowledge and patents acquired, as well as consultancy costs exclusively assigned to the project, among others.
The subsidy will be determined as a percentage of these eligible items, which will vary according to the size of the company and the type of project. Thus, these percentages may range from 70% for industrial research in small companies to 25% for experimental development in large companies.
Access to the aid will be on a competitive basis, according to the criteria set out in the call for proposals. Factors such as the impact on employment, the investment in technological resources dedicated to R&D, the promotion of collaboration agreements with public and private agents, the continuity in carrying out R&D activities or the contribution to the green transition and digital transformation will be taken into account.
