Yesterday’s proposed changes to the Export Market Development Grants (EMDG) scheme were introduced into Parliament as the EMDG Amendment Bill 2010.
The changes proposed aim to extend the life of the EMDG scheme and better balance the cost of the scheme to its budget as well as ensuring that those exporters most deserving of grants receive the greatest level of support possible within the budget available for the scheme.
The changes are as follows:
- Extending the EMDG scheme so that it applies to all grant years from 2011-12 to 2015-16 inclusive;
- Reducing the maximum grant from $200,000 to $150,000;
- Reducing the maximum number of grants available for an individual recipient from eight to seven;
- Capping intellectual property registration expenses at $50,000 per application;
- Increasing the minimum expenses threshold from $10,000 to $20,000;
- Increasing the income limit for members of approved joint ventures/consortia from $30 million to $50 million;
- Removing approved trading houses as an eligible special approval applicant category;
- Reinstating disqualifying conviction provisions in the Act that were unintentionally removed when Criminal Code Amendment (Theft, Fraud, Bribery and Related Offences) Act 2000 rules replaced earlier disqualifying conviction provisions;
- Enabling Austrade to impose conditions on the accreditation of EMDG consultants; and
- Amending the ‘form and manner’ requirements and claim lodgement deadlines for applications submitted by accredited EMDG consultants (enabling Austrade, for example, to accept later lodgment of claims from accredited consultants).
“These proposed changes are fine as long as they provide certainty that SME exporters can rely on what they are expecting to receive,” remarked Ivan Kaye, CEO of consultancy Business Strategies International.
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