Gwangju City Promotes Customized Growth Support Project for Social Economy Enterprises

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Seon-gang] Gwangju Metropolitan City announced on the 18th that the Gwangju Social Economy Support Center will promote various growth support projects to ensure the sustainable growth and competitiveness of local social economy enterprises.

The customized growth support projects for social economy enterprises are divided into five categories: ▲ fostering leading social economy enterprises ▲ supporting general cooperative startup enterprises ▲ supporting social economy collaboration ▲ supporting acquisition of social economy enterprise certification marks ▲ supporting entry of social economy enterprises into large retailers.

First, the support for fostering leading social economy enterprises is implemented to discover promising excellent companies and nurture them as star companies leading the social economy in the region. This year, four companies will be selected, each receiving 29 million KRW over two years along with management consulting.

The support for general cooperative startup enterprises provides up to 10 million KRW per company and customized consulting to five selected general cooperatives established within the last three years, depending on their business content.

The social economy collaboration support project is divided into two areas: collaboration model development and commercialization.

This project is open only to collaboration teams composed of three or more companies, of which at least two must be local social economy enterprises.

For collaboration model development, seven teams will be selected and each will receive 2 million KRW, while for commercialization, five teams will receive 15 million KRW each, totaling 12 teams supported with 89 million KRW.

The social economy enterprise certification mark acquisition support project targets five social economy enterprises located in Gwangju, supporting the acquisition of domestic certification marks by covering certification fees, testing fees, and other related costs up to 4 million KRW per company.

The support for entry of social economy enterprises into large retailers strengthens the sales channels and self-sustainability of 30 social economy enterprises participating in planned exhibitions and special sales events in collaboration with large marts, department stores, and complex shopping malls by providing a total of 11 million KRW for promotions and operating expenses.

Gwangju City and others plan to select participating companies next month.

Detailed information such as application qualifications can be found at the Gwangju Social Economy Support Center and its website.

Park Jeong-hwan, Director of the City’s Job Economy Office, said, “We are promoting various support projects to enhance the growth and competitiveness of social economy enterprises struggling due to COVID-19,” adding, “We will continue to prepare diverse policies to ensure promising social economy enterprises can grow sustainably.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.