Zurich, 10 February 2010 The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) recently extended the mandate to FINANCEcontact for the management of the SECO Start-up Fund (SSF) for another five years. FINANCEcontact is located at the headoffice of Swisscontact in Zurich and benefits from the local network and support of Swisscontact in the target countries for the SSF.

In 2009, six projects were supported by the SSF. One of them is a wood processing company in Bosnia-Herzegovina, producing wood lamella for parquet flooring. The other promoted start-ups are located in Serbia (furniture), Georgia (wood processing), Vietnam (recycling of printer cartridges), Burkina Faso (dried fruit) and Tanzania (tourism).

The SSF provides loans for co-financing start-up investment projects of Swiss SMEs in emerging markets and transition countries, where commercial financing for start-ups is not available. Through the SSF, SECO promotes the private economy in partner countries, helps to create jobs and train people. At the same time, it aims to strengthen the Swiss economy so that Swiss SMEs with successful investments in emerging markets become more competitive in global business.

Since its inception in 1999 the SSF provided loans of CHF 30 million to 90 projects. As the fund provides a maximum of 50% of the needed capital of a project, these grants have raised investments of CHF 113 million. It has helped to create more than 10’000 new jobs in 29 emerging market countries.