Green plan initiated for Cebu SMEs

The European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ECCP) has initiated a funding programme, with an initial amount of 75 million peso for small and medium enterprises (SME) in Cebu to help produce “green products” that will be exported to Europe, writes Business Mirror.

Henry Schumacher, ECCP executive VP, says the beneficiaries are around 450 Cebu-based SMEs in the furniture and furnishing, fashion accessories, gifts, toys and housewares businesses.

The three-year SMEs for Environmental Accountability, Responsibility and Transparency project was initiated by German organisation Sequa Gmbh, and is co-funded by the European Union and the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development.

An initiative of Georgia's Bank Republic's loan packages is offering credits with a 16% interest rate of up to a 10-year time period, says The Financial.

The institution is among a few banks in Georgia supporting business crediting, while the majority of financial organisations have stopped this process.

Obtaining a long-term loan from Bank Republic requires the individual to have been in charge of a small or micro business for at least three months.

Brisbane-based hosting and co-location provider, Sanity Technology, has signed BlueFibre as the first reseller for its Fortitude Valley data centre, reports ARN.

BlueFibre will offer co-location space and Internet services to the SME market, while Sanity continues to focus on government and corporate customers that demand exceptionally high availability offerings.

“BlueFibre is pushing into the Brisbane market at the moment and is a co-location client of ours,” says Andrew McLeod, Sanity Technology director. “The company targets a different market to Sanity. We engaged them to help target the SME market.”