Government commits to more SME capital up to 2015
ECF scheme goes to cloud and SaaS companies
Conservative MP Mark Prisk, the UK’s minister of state for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has told Parliament the chunk of Enterprise Capital Funds which head to cloud computing and software as a service companies.
Responding to a question from Tory MP for Brighton, Simon Kirby, Prisk said in April, BIS committed £25 million to go to SMEs in the cloud computing and SaaS sectors. Over £130 million has been spent on over 120 SMEs since the ECF program launched under New Labour in 2006.
The government said it will spend another £200 million on ECFs on the spending review period up to April 2015. It will provide over £300 million in venture capital investment for early stage SMEs which the government has decided have the “highest growth potential”. The government partially funds the schemes, with the rest made up from the private sector.
In BIS’ own terms, ECFs address a “market weakness in the provision of equity finance to SMEs, by using government funding to establish funds that operate within the equity gap”.