01/11/2010
The deputy prime minister has spoken about plans for a new 1.4bn regional growth fund, and the role it will play in the economic recovery.
According to Sky News, the fund is intended to help bring in private investment and increase the number of private sector jobs after Regional Development Agencies (RDA) were scrapped earlier this year.
"The people we want to benefit from this scheme are people who come up with ideas about how to create new jobs and to create new business," said Nick Clegg, speaking at a plastics factory in Oldham. "We now want to say, 'Look, now let's do something exciting with the money that we have got,' which is actually create new jobs, new growth, new optimism, new hope in the private sector."
The regional growth fund was created to support the areas of Britain that relied on the public sector, and as a result will be hit hard by the spending cuts.
Private bodies and public-private partnerships who can demonstrate that their proposal will bring in private investment and support sustainable increases in private sector jobs and growth in their area, are being invited to apply for part of the fund.
However, the fund is limited to England only and there will be many areas that will miss out on a chance for funding because they aren't considered to be reliant on the public sector. In this case, businesses should consider other ways of generating cash themselves to help drive the economic recovery. Through invoice financing, for example, companies can get a cash advance on an invoice issued to a client, and hand over the responsibility of chasing the debt to the bank.
Other options include seeking outside investment, applying for personal credit and looking at traditional bank loans, to name a few.
Laura Nineham