HBOR Encouraging youth employment by reducing interest rates
HBOR enabled financing to small and medium-sized enterprises that employ and/or will employ young persons at interest rates reduced by 50 basis points

HBOR joined the Jobs for Youth Initiative launched by the European Investment Bank through which investments of small and medium-sized enterprises into education and skills as well as employment of young people are financed. The main feature of this Initiative is saving onhttps://www.hbor.hr/ interest rate achieved by entities employing or training young persons.

Total reduction of interest rate is 50 basis points. The application of this Initiative is made possible under 15 HBOR loan programmes, regardless of whether a loan is approved directly or via commercial bank, and the reduced interest rate is applied to the entire loan repayment period.

The beneficiaries of such reduced interest rate can be small and medium-sized entrepreneurs that fulfil at least one of the prescribed criteria, e.g. that during 6 months before the submission of loan application they employed and still employ at least one young person (up to 30 years), or plan to employ at least one young person in the following 6 months. One of the criteria can also be that at the time of loan application submission they offer professional or practical training, i.e. training programmes for youth or that at the moment of submission of their loan application they have a concluded cooperation contract for the employment of young people with a school or an educational institution providing university or professional study programmes (e.g. summer internship). The right to reduced interest rate can also be given to entrepreneurs that already make use of supports through the national measures of youth employment at the time of loan submission.

„Taking into account the problem of youth unemployment in Croatia, HBOR in cooperation with EIB decided to reduce interest rates by 50 basis points. By this measure, we want to provide young people even more favourable loans for financing their entrepreneurial projects, and also encourage experienced entrepreneurs to employ young people in order to reduce their expatriation. The envisaged funds for the implementation of this measure are limited to HRK 200 million, and therefore we invite all entrepreneurs to contact us as soon as possible and present their projects“, emphasized Dušan Tomašević, President of the Management Board of HBOR.

We would like to remind that currently, HBOR interest rates for financing investments are 2, 3 or 4% and can now be additionally reduced by 50 basis points if entrepreneurs employ young persons.