The Innovation Fund has announced two new calls for that will be allocated 2.5 million euros to support innovation activities of enterprises realized in cooperation with research organizations: Collaborative Grant Scheme and Innovation vouchers.

The funds are defined in the budget of the Republic of Serbia, from the section of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, through the Competitiveness and Employment Development Project (based on the loan agreement with the World Bank).

Collaborative Grant Scheme is aimed to encourage private-sector companies and public research and development organisations to implement joint R&D projects so as to create a new intellectual property which is marketable and has market value. The beneficiaries here are consortiums composed of private enterprises and R&D institutions.

Through this programme, the Fund provides co-financing in the amount of up to 300.000 EUR per project and may contribute maximum 70 percentage to the total budget of the project, while the consortium’s contribution to the total budget of the project must be at least 30 percentage.

The Public call is open until 28 December, 2018. Innovation vouchers constitute a simple financial incentive intended for small and medium-sized enterprises to, using the R&D sector services, raise the level of their product innovativeness and become more competitive in the market. Maximum amount granted per an innovative voucher is 800 thousand RSD, which covers up to 80 percentage of the total costs of the service concerned (without the value-added tax). This public call has been earmarked the funds amounting to 48 million RSD.

The Public call will be open until the earmarked funds are spent. The goal of the Innovation Fund Fond is to strengthen connections between the research community and innovative enterprises. Therefore, it launched the Collaborative Grant Scheme and Innovation Vouchers so as to encourage them to, through joint developmental projects, create innovative products to be introduced in the market.

All additional information: http://www.innovationfund.rs/