Western Macedonia: 19.65 mln to 127 businesses

Two new decisions on funding for businesses in Western Macedonia were announced by the Region, in a press release published on Thursday 20 August 2026 at 14:58. According to the announcement, under the decisions of the Regional Governor of Western Macedonia Giorgos Amanatidis the Special Managing Authority of the Programme “Western Macedonia 2021-2027” approved 127 additional funding applications. The subsidised budget of the new approvals comes to 19.65 million euros and the corresponding public expenditure to 13.84 million euros. The approvals are distributed across the two entrepreneurship support actions the Region is running, “Business Recovery” and “Business Start-up”. These are two of the main tools for supporting private enterprise under the Region’s current programming framework.

With the new inclusions, the total number of business plans supported by the two actions reaches 265, with a cumulative subsidised budget of more than 41.5 million euros and total public expenditure of about 29.3 million euros. Under “Business Recovery”, which is aimed at existing businesses, 82 applications were added with a subsidised budget of 13,338,930.67 euros and public expenditure of 9,387,701.09 euros, while approved plans now come to 163, with 26,816,566.83 and 18,875,625.82 euros respectively. Under “Business Start-up”, which concerns new businesses or businesses being set up, 45 additional applications were approved with 6,315,792.24 euros of subsidised budget and 4,454,376.56 euros of public expenditure, bringing the total to 102 plans with 14,765,212.38 and 10,430,160.23 euros.

The actions cover the areas of Kozani, Eordaia, Grevena, Kastoria and Florina. The Region links the programme with the transition to the post-lignite era, in an area where the phase-out of lignite has changed the basis of local production and employment. The funding comes from the European Regional Development Fund and from national resources. For the small units in the five areas the significance of the approvals is essentially a cash-flow one, since the public expenditure covers part of investments that would otherwise have to seek bank lending. The scale of domestic consumption, on which much of this business activity depends, is also reflected in the recent ELSTAT figures on retail turnover. The announcement itself describes the approvals as an injection of liquidity into the local economy.

According to the press release, the new approvals came after an increase in the available public expenditure of the Calls and after the completion of the pre-inclusion check and the cumulation check, so as to make use of applications that had been assessed positively but remained pending. The announcement does not say how many applications are still outstanding, nor does it set a timetable for disbursing the sums or for a new round of approvals. Nor is the distribution of the approved plans by area or by sector specified. The Region gave no figures for the number of jobs linked to the 265 plans, or for the rate of absorption of the funds so far. Such indicators are usually recorded in subsequent monitoring reports on the Programme rather than in inclusion decisions. More economic reporting from across the country in the Economy section.