GRTU is pleased to introduce to you Conal Impex Ltd, which is situated in Athens and it is mainly dealing with the export of Greek Natural Food Products such as Extrissimo, Organic and Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Olives and a wide range of other natural Greek food products.
The export manager George N. Anastassakis, wrote saying the company is looking to start new business cooperation with Companies in Malta that would be interested in importing any of their products.
On the occasion of the fourth meeting of the European SME envoys held in Malta today, European Commission Vice President Antonio Tajani announced a series of new initiatives and planned actions to improve access of SMEs to finance, to boost entrepreneurship and to go international. To facilitate access to finance, the European Commission published today a practical guide providing information on how to access over €50 billion of public finance in the 27 Member States. Secondly the Commission launched a European wide training campaign for the Enterprise Europe Network to help SMEs get access to finance.
SMEs can contact one of 600 Enterprise Europe Network partners, who will be able to provide information on EU and national sources of finance. Vice President Tajani will also discuss with the SME envoys possible elements for an entrepreneurship action plan which Mr Tajani aims to table after the summer break to encourage the creation of new businesses and jobs. The plan intends to address obstacles, which hinder would-be entrepreneurs to set up their own business. It will also include measures to make the option of becoming his or her own boss a more widespread option.
European Commission Vice President Antonio Tajani, responsible for enterprise and industry policies, said today: "If we want to stimulate growth in Europe, it is from our SMEs that we must start. Entrepreneurial potential in Europe is not fully exploited: 45% of all Europeans would like to become their own boss if they could, but only an average of 10% are actually self-employed today. If we could raise this percentage, we could have millions of new innovative and creative enterprises which would rejuvenate Europe's economic basis, make it more robust, more job-generating and more resilient to stormy economic".
Background
Practical guide for SMEs to help access over €50billion of finance
To facilitate access to finance, the European Commission published today a practical guide for SMEs providing information on how to access over €50 billion of public finance in the 27 Member States. It presents over 120 national or regional financing programmes and provides key information helping SMEs to apply for the different programmes in terms of characteristics, terms, conditions and contact information.
At the same time the Commission published an evaluation of public financing programmes in 5 Member States (Germany, France, the UK, Poland and Sweden) to exchange good practice and assess which programmes work best and could be used in other countries. The evaluation highlights that public financing programmes need to have a clear scope and be flexible so that there can be changes if required such as during the present economic crisis.
More information – To access EU financial instruments, please visit the website of the European Investment Fund to locate banks or venture capital funds that provide finance in your country.
More than 600 Enterprise Europe Network partners advise on access to finance
Staff members of more than 600 partners of the Enterprise Europe Network were trained on access to finance so that they can now better advise SMEs finding the right financing provider. The Commission has established the Enterprise Europe Network to help SMEs to become more competitive, to internationalize and to find business and technology partners. The network is represented in 51 countries with 600 partner organizations. SMEs wishing to access finance, can contact the nearest member of the Enterprise Europe Network, who will be able to provide information on EU and national sources of finance.
More information
Action plan to set entrepreneurial potential of Europeans free
The European Commission is preparing an Entrepreneurship Action Plan – to be published in autumn 2012 – that will address areas where the entrepreneurial potential of citizens can be unleashed and where key bottlenecks can be overcome and obstacles to entrepreneurial activities removed. Possible areas of action include:
Facilitating Transfers of business: Each year, 150,000 companies with 600,000 jobs are lost due to the fact that owners retire or move on to other activities.
Efficient bankruptcy procedures and offering second chance: As 96% of all bankrupts are honest (e.g. due to late payments), faster and more affordable procedures for winding up business and for discharging them from bankruptcy could stimulate the creation of businesses.
Young people – the entrepreneurs of the future: Young people start more companies when they have gone through an "entrepreneurship" programme during primary or secondary education.
Women – the largest untapped pool of entrepreneurial potential in Europe: Women face a number of difficulties in running a business and constitute only a third of the self-employed in the EU.
Seniors – keep business knowledge active: Citizens above 50 bring valuable know-how and experience to start and run a company.
More information
The guide on access to finance and the training for the EEN staff are measures from the November 2011 Action Plan to improve access to finance for SMEs (MEMO/11/879).
Last February, the European Union (EU) legislator adopted Regulation (EU) No 260/2012 establishing technical and business requirements for credit transfers and direct debits in euro and amending Regulation (EC) No 924/2009, commonly referenced as the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) Regulation.
The SEPA Regulation defines 1 February 2014 as the deadline in the euro area for compliance with the core provisions of this regulation. In non euro countries, the deadline will be 31 October 2016. Effectively, this means that as of these dates, existing national euro credit transfer and direct debit schemes will be replaced by SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) and SEPA Direct Debit (SDD).
SEPA is currently defined as consisting of the 27 EU member states plus Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Monaco. The adoption of the SEPA Regulation demonstrates that "the EU institutions continue to work diligently to deepen the internal market in financial services, with the euro at its core. This agreement is a vote of confidence in the euro, and I am convinced that it will be a good deal for consumers and businesses," said Sharon Bowles, Member of the European Parliament.
SEPA stands for an EU integration initiative in the area of payments. Following the introduction of euro notes and coins in 2002, the political drivers of the SEPA initiative – EU governments, the European Commission and the European Central Bank- focused on harmonising the euro payments market. Integrating the multitude of national payment systems existing today is a natural step towards making the euro a truly single and fully functioning currency.
SEPA is the area where citizens, companies and other economic actors can make and receive payments in euro, throughout Europe, whether within or across national boundaries under the same basic conditions, rights and obligations, regardless of their location.
This original SEPA concept defined by the European public authorities holds that within SEPA all euro payments will be domestic. Once SEPA is achieved, there should be no differentiation between national and cross-border euro payments. As such, SEPA payment instruments are designed to replace national euro payment instruments which exist today.
In a joint statement of May 2006, the European Commission and the European Central Bank pointed out: "The introduction of the euro as the single currency of the euro area will only be completed when SEPA has become a reality, i.e. when consumers, businesses and governments are able to make cashless payments throughout the euro area from a single payment account anywhere in the euro area using a single set of payment instruments as easily, efficiently and safely as they can make payments today in the domestic context."
The SCT and SDD payment schemes facilitate the exchange of electronic euro payments across all 32 SEPA countries. They can be regarded as instruction manuals which provide a common understanding on how to move funds from account A to account B within SEPA. The harmonised SEPA payment schemes can be compared to other frameworks, which prescribe standardised processes to be observed by actors operating in network industries.
An example of such integration initiatives are standardised railway tracks allowing a multitude of commercial railway operators to move their trains across borders. Similar examples of standardisation in network industries can be found in the areas of telecommunication, television or radio.
The purpose of migrating from a multitude of national euro payment schemes for credit transfers and direct debits, to a single set of harmonised SEPA schemes can be compared to implementing standardised railroad tracks for the exchange of payments across the EU. Migration to a single set of SEPA payment schemes allows multiple payment service providers to offer a broad range of diversified payment services and products for euro credit transfers and euro direct debits throughout SEPA. As a result, customers benefit from increased competition and more choices in the payments market.
The European Payments Council (EPC) shares the view that an end date for phasing out legacy euro payment schemes for credit transfers and direct debits ensures planning security for all market participants. The EPC is responsible, among other things, for the development and maintenance of the SCT and SDD Schemes in close dialogue with the customer community.
The introduction of SEPA makes paying bills significantly easier for mobile European citizens including workers, students, holiday home owners, tourists or retirees living abroad. At the same time, SEPA benefits consumers who wish to purchase goods or services from retailers located in SEPA countries other than their home country. All consumers will be able to rely on one home account for all – domestic and cross-border – payments throughout SEPA.
Migrating to harmonised SEPA payment schemes offers businesses significant efficiency gains through the automation of payment processing and the ability of businesses to optimise the cash management process. The latter can be achieved by companies consolidating accounts currently maintained in different European countries to handle local payments into one single account and subsequently centralising liquidity.
The integration of the euro payments market also facilitates the expansion of businesses across national borders, by introducing a standardised payment infrastructure. Innovative end-to-end SEPA solutions based on global technical standards lead to decreased IT costs, simplify reconciliation and help to streamline back office functions.
Early movers on the customer side who reported on their SEPA migration experience in the free online EPC Newsletter concur that migration to SEPA pays off. For example: Stefan Scheidgen, Head of Cash Management and Accounting at Deutsche Post Pension Service Business Division, points out: "We have accomplished execution times of just one business day for SCTs, which allows our contracting partners to save liquidity. In the process of migrating to SEPA, we consolidated the previous four payment systems into one. We plan to further automate our banking processes, based on the implementation of SEPA schemes and standards, which will result in even more efficiency."
The Deutsche Post Pension Service Business Division disburses 25 million pension payments per month on behalf of the public German retirement scheme to retirees residing in Germany and abroad. By January 2012, 22.5 million of these payments were SCTs. The insurance company UNIQA Group Austria, which services approximately 7.5 million customers in 21 regional markets, essentially concluded the transition to both SCT and SDD in 2011.
Thomas Weissmann, Project Manager with the group, stated: "SEPA is an excellent and necessary idea. Migrating to the harmonised SEPA payment schemes allows for more efficient account reconciliation. Being able to collect direct debits throughout Europe using the harmonised SDD Schemes is also a principal advantage for us." Anneli Seppälä, Payment Processing Manager of Kela, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, concludes: "Our experience confirms that our payment processes are more efficient following SEPA implementation." Kela, which makes some 33.3 million payments annually, completed its migration project at the end of 2010.
Project managers who have already concluded the migration exercise unanimously recommend that organisations that have yet to adapt their systems and operations to SEPA Schemes and technical standards should act immediately.
Gerard Hartsink chaired the EPC from 2002 until June 2012. For more information, visit the EPC Website at www.epc-cep.eu.
The Commission has issued a proposal for new bank crisis management measures. The new measures, which were made public on 6 June, are designed to create a sounder and stronger financial system and to avoid banks being bailed out with public money.
The proposed framework will be based, in the first place, on prevention through early intervention. Moreover, it will ensure that national authorities and the European Banking Authority (EBA) have the appropriate coordination tools to implement coherent procedures, particularly across borders. The framework will also provide for credible resolution tools when a bank is no longer viable but allowing it to go bankrupt would disrupt essential financial services and overall stability. The Commission said that sufficient funds should be available to finance resolution, but should only serve to ensure the continuity of critical functions and not to bail out troubled institutions.
Transport Malta would like to inform all Motor Car Dealers and new vehicle owners registering a USED Motor Vehicle of the type M 1, (vehicle constructed for the carriage of passengers and comprising no more than eight seats in addition to driver's seat), that as from the 15th June 2012, the registration certificate (logbook) will also include the vehicle's odometer reading (mileage) as confirmed on the date of registration with Transport Malta. The odometer reading will be printed on the top, right hand side under the Section (Notes).
The declared mileage is based on the vehicles inspection made by Transport Malta, and include the confirmation of the vehicles mileage as verified (where applicable) by the authorised agency approved by Transport Malta.
This information would enable the new vehicle owner to be aware of the vehicle's odometer reading as at the date of registration in Malta.
More than any sector, commerce has fostered and campaigned for the realisation of the Single Market. Therefore GRTU is delighted with the adoption by the European Commission of the Communications on the implementation of the Services Directive and on better governance for the Single Market. The Communications demonstrate that implementation of EU legislation, in particular the Services Directive, must be improved and there is a need for a firmer enforcement policy to boost growth.
Europe is still a long way off a smooth functioning internal market. Actions are necessary to make it easier for service providers, in particular retailers, to sell cross-border, establish and conduct a retail business in another Member State and enable companies to fully benefit from a true internal market. If we want to make a success of the Single Market, Member States and the Commission need to work together to remove barriers that are an impediment to growth. We strongly support the Commission's engagement to open more efficient infringement procedures against violations of the Services Directive. We are particularly pleased that the Commission plans to focus on sectors with the largest growth potential which includes the retail sector. Retail plays a key role in the European economy, particularly in terms of its economic contribution and its role as an employer.
GRTU is a strong supporter of the Commission's initiative to identify the need to address a number of bottlenecks for growth in the retail sector and we are looking forward to the adoption of a European Retail Action Plan later this year.
Eligible enterprises include:
Manufacturers
Service providers
Licensing and Franchising
Companies seeking joint ventures and strategic alliances
Technology Transfer
Companies seeking R&D opportunities
Companies seeking to import finished products are NOT eligible.
As part of its assistance Malta Enterprise will endeavour to set-up one-to-one meetings for participants through its institutional networks. Malta Enterprise will also refund eligible participants up to 60% of flight costs and a per diem allowance. Refund is for one representative per participating company.
Application forms together with a €250 deposit should be sent to us or forwarded by hand by Friday 1st June, 2012. This deposit will be fully refunded together with the financial assistance referred to above after the event. In cases where a company cancels its participation, any cancellation costs incurred by Malta Enterprise on behalf of the company will be deducted from this deposit. For further information please contact Robert Falzon on 25423239 or
Why did you become an entrepreneur? First of all I like business and it was a family business but I did study as well. How have you come to choose your line of business?
It was a family business so I continued the line and expand it into new markets
Where did you go on your last holiday?
England – the thing I liked most was the country side
What is your earliest memory?
Summer – When I was a child
If you could chose to be someone famous who would you be and why?
I don't think I would like to be someone famous because basically then you are always the centre of attraction and without privacy. I am happy as I am!!
Stellina Galea is the living proof this is possible. She went through a 16 week programme during which her life changed completely. This is what she went through! Stellina Galea is a 48 year old woman in business; an accountant by profession and a specialized travel agent. With all the stress that a woman can encounter when having both a family and a career it was impossible believing that better attitudes in her lifestyle could make her feel better until she met Mr John Xuereb, a life coach who succeeded in proving her wrong.
"I lead a very stressful life, juggling between my profession, business and career. I have been married for 26 years and have a 20 year old son". This is the life of Stellina Galea, she describes that along the years with each passing day she felt more tired and therefore did not exercise and gained excessive weight. "For people that have such an active and hectic lifestyle like mine this was very discouraging and depressing. Everybody used to say that this was normal… that I was going through a middle-age crisis" said Mrs Galea. She however neither believed nor accepted this.
The welcome change came last summer, in July, when Stellina met John Xuereb of Bodies N' Motion and her life changed dramatically. Not only did John Xuereb change her life but also the lives of her family members. Stellina Galea stated that "My husband, my son and I lost 14 kilos of fat, a total of 42 kilos in a family of three!" and what is most striking is that although the hectic lifestyle she and her family manage they still succeed in keeping all that fat away.
Mrs Galea explained the way her lifestyle changed to the better. She emphasized that she felt more energetic, noticed more productivity during her day of work and she felt she was managing her business with more energy and ease. In a few words she had a more optimistic view of her life but the best thing she experienced was that she dedicated more time to herself together with all the activity she goes trough on a daily basis.
For Stellina Galea the most important benefit of the weight loss programme was the way that: "my family and I experienced the benefit of a higher energy level. Moreover, we do feel and look better."
Mrs Galea also shared that her husband, even though he is also an accountant by profession, found a suitable time to join in and feel the marvelous benefits of this programme. Stellina Galea stated that her husband "suffered from high cholesterol levels for over 12 years and was on intense medication methods. He was also told that he would never be able to neither reduce his medication nor get rid of it all." Stellina's husband was having to increase his medication each year until he met John Xuereb and completed one of his 16 week life transformation programmes and his cholesterol came back to its normal levels. Moreover, what is most striking is that Mr Galea managed to reduce his medicinal intake to zero.
"I now weigh as much as I used to when I was 21 years old and I never imagined that with changes to and the elimination of habits, which we stick to unconditionally, such a positive thing could make me feel and look better and younger at the same time. I feel like I went into a time machine and went back 25 years in time" concluded Stellina Galea.
