Usage of financial support from EU funds in South Bohemian region

The work of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is important for their ability to reduce the negative impact of structural changes, create the conditions for the innovative activities, for implementing new technologies etc. On the other hand the small and medium-sized companies encounter lots of obstacles, especially complicated legislation, administrative problems and also difficult access to the financial resources. Their importance in economy and their small economical power requires that they get lots of support. The support of the small and middle size enterprise can be divided into two parts. The first part is made by the support provided from the state budget of the Czech Republic, whose allocation is by the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic. The second part is the support of co-financing from funds of EU. Although the financial help is offered to the small and medium-sized enterprises through the programmes of support to the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), it isn’t always fully utilized. As the investigation has shown in the region of South-Bohemia the financial resources from the Operational Programme Industry and Enterprise (OPIE) were not fully utilized due to the lack information about these programmes and complicated preparation of applications.