The commercial sector, with fewer and fewer businessmen in the old town, will be the great beneficiary this year of different local, regional and European aid. The City Council wants to put an end to the poor image given by certain streets in the historic center, such as Aire and San Fernando, among others, where most of the commercial premises are empty and in poor condition. To do this, it will opt for the four calls for subsidies that the Autonomous Community will open in a few days.
Among them, a novel one stands out, which tries to train and help small merchants to start businesses. The intention is to give financial support for the improvement and adaptation of premises; to pay the rent, electricity, water, among other expenses, such as Internet access and computer and electronic products. The aid is also intended for the purchase of furniture and decorative elements.
“Entrepreneurs will also have advice to see the suitability of the business they want to start,” announced yesterday the Minister of Business, Valle Miguélez, after a meeting she had with the mayoress, Noelia Arroyo, at the Town Hall. At the meeting, she announced the aid that this regional department will shortly make available to the City Council, with a budget of 1.5 million euros.
The grant will make it possible to pay for the repair of the ground floor, the rent, the furniture and part of the current reopening expenses
There will also be subsidies, within the same package, to boost the sector, to organize fairs and to improve public commercial infrastructures, such as food markets.
Arroyo explained that the City Council will present projects to each of these calls. “The destination of these funds will be coordinated in a work group made up of the local and regional administrations and the business and commercial associations,” he explained. Also present at the meeting were the president of the Confederation of Business Organizations of Cartagena (COEC), the president of the Chamber of Commerce, Miguel Martínez, and the president of the Regional Association of Merchants, José Ángel Díaz.
Dynamization
With this regional money, with which the City Council will put up and the one that she hopes to get from Europe, the mayoress calculates that commerce will have 300,000 euros at its disposal this 2023 to “develop projects to promote commerce, so necessary to continue betting on stores of proximity, the soul of the municipalities,” said Arroyo.
This money also includes the artificial intelligence application that will be created to boost local commerce, devised by the COEC employers’ association and requested by the Regional Association of Merchants, and the aid “so that once the works of San Fernando are finished , this street becomes an attractive area for commerce and that it integrates into the axis of Juan XXIII and Santa Florentina”, concluded the mayoress after the meeting.
#direct #aid #merchants #open #empty #premises #town #Cartagena #truth