Everything is going up – except EMDG.
Another email with some fresh news for exporters that has happened today.
Interest rates are rising, cost of living is rising, cost of electricity, export shipping costs and the like.
EMDG is however bucking the trend, going down, not up!!!
You will be sent an email later today from Austrade.
Round 2 Funding Caps.
The Minister and Austrade have set the caps on the maximum grant payments for Round 2 of EMDG.
Round 2 is for those applicants who applied in July/August to seek pre-approval of expenditure for this financial year 2022/2023 and beyond.
The maximum grant amounts by Tier level being:
• Tier 1 $10,000 down from $15,000 in Round 1 a 30% reduction.
• Tier 2 $18,000 down from $24,600 in Round 1 a 27% reduction
• Tier 3 $28,000 down from $36,600 in Round 1 a 23% reduction
• Tier 4 $50,000 down from $90,000 in Round 1 a 44% reduction
The reason behind the decision is simple, EMDG is a demand driven scheme, the demand for funds again exceeding the supply of money (unchanged in the recent budget). It’s a rationing process as per Round 1.
For both Round’s 1 and 2 the maximum grant amount in practice is well below those promulgated in theory for the program.
For Round 2 it will now mean (taking over from Round 1) the lowest maximum payout figure in over 45 plus years of EMDG.
Senator Farrell the current Minister of course has signed off on the above.
It is not his fault at all. He is just dealing with the poor EMDG policy planning, program design and implementation inherited from his predecessor and failure of the changes to the program following on from the 2019 review. Do not get me started again about this, I will never stop.
Two other major points: –
Round 1
There is no change.
You will still be paid are per the caps for that round and your agreement will cover 3 years expect for Tier 1 applicants.
It’s another flaw that two exporters in the same year FY 2022/23 (Round 1 & Round 2) doing the same things and spending the same sort of money will be paid different amounts of EMDG support. Pretty dumb idea to me.
Round 3
There is no change
This is still expected to happen in March 2023.
Other News
The email will also refer you to the Austrade website in terms of some processing stats for the Round 1 Milestone reports and Round 2 grant offers. We of course will manage those things for you.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Regards,
Stuart & team