Welsh Assembly Government Announces £68m Funding to Fight
the Downturn
Summary
The Welsh Assembly Government has announced additional
programmes worth £68 million to help individuals, communities and
businesses across Wales through the current economic downturn.
These new programmes are in addition to the £877 million worth of
support already announced since the Economic Summit in October.
The measures include:
- ProAct - a new programme to provide training for people
who would otherwise be made redundant or put on short-time working.
Proact complements the ReAct programme, and will help to prevent
redundancies as well as improving the skills base. It will be
piloted from next month.
- £45 million Business Growth Project is designed to create
6,000 jobs. This new Business Growth project will be
delivered through the Assembly Government's Flexible Support for
Business programme and will provide a high level of one-to-one
support through a specialised relationship management service for
SMEs including social enterprises.
- £23 million of capital expenditure will be brought
forward into the remainder of this financial year.
In addition, the Assembly Government’s Basic Skills Pledge will
be expanded to enable 10,000 Welsh workers to benefit from this
programme over the next 2 years.
Semta View
Semta in Wales has been advocating the
creation of the ProAct programme for some time, and will be working
particularly closely with the Welsh Automotive Forum to examine
ways in which ProAct can ease some of the problems facing their
sector.
12 December 2008
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