Projects rejected for RRP funding issue complaints
Thirteen large projects have received a “non-favourable” or rejection classification in the results of the second phase of the competition for ‘Recovery and Resilience Plan ‘bazooka’ funding called Mobilising Agendas for Enterprise Innovation.
According to the Ministry of the Economy and Sea that oversees the RRP, there have been 10 complaints presented by consortiums.
In all, the 13 projects rejected by the International jury would have meant €813 million of potential investment. An official source at the ministry headed by António Costa Silva said that the “complaints analysis procedure will be completed as soon as possible so that any projects which might be reclassified can start the negotiation process and draw up a contract”.
Apart from the construction company Casais which was one of the first to present a complaint over being excluded from a €47 million investment (the company is a leader in sustainable construction), various consortiums told the online news source ECO that they have issued formal complaints after being turned down.
Among the companies that have issued complaints are: Mediceus, which heads the project Data4Life in the Digital Health area (€28.2 million); Void Software “Decentralise Portugal with Blockchain” (€73 million), A-MoVer (€30 million) which plans to make three-wheel electric vehicles, and Immunethep, leading the consortium PORVACC (€65.5 million) which wants to create the first complete value chain in Portugal in vaccine and biological medicine production.
Of the 64 consortiums that passed the first phase, the international jury had selected 51, involving 1,226 entities, including 933 companies (60% of which are SMEs) and 111 are higher education and scientific and technology systems entities.
The Prime Minister announced on 21 June that Agendas Mobilizadoras (Mobilising Agendas – Compete 2020) which has a total investment of €7.5Bn to distribute, will receive €3Bn of public funding.