The management of the Palestinian Fund for Employment and Social Protection for workers (PFESP) headed by the Chairman of the Management Board Dr. Mamoun Abu Shahla the Minister Of Labor and the Executive Director for PFESP Ibtisam Al-Husari discussed with the Italian Consul Fabio Scolowice and Cristina Netwally representing the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation the implementation of the second phase of the Italian Project Start Up Palestine and that’s during a meeting which was held in the headquarters of PFESP in Ramallah’s city yesterday for the Advisory Committee of the Project.

The management of PFESP briefed the Italian delegation on the progress of the project and the results achieved during the first phase.

The meeting was attended by the Directors of Departments of PFESP and representatives of Italian Development Cooperation Agency.

Abu Shahla started the meeting by praising the Italian support provided by the official and popular level to stand with the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom and access to state independence.

He also praised the role which Is played by the Italian Cooperation Foundation through programs and projects that aim to reduce poverty and unemployment in Palestine, stressing that PFESP in the national address entrusted with managing and coordinating all efforts to create job opportunities and increase employment in addition to the aimed youth initiatives that provide self-employment opportunities by supporting and expanding the capacity of existing projects and establishing new projects.

Abu Shahla added: That the existing partnership with the Italian Cooperation Foundation is a strategic partnership that has contributed significantly to strengthening the role of PFESP to assume its national responsibilities, pointing out that PFESP is in the process of forging new strategic partnerships with a number of other donor institutions.

On Scolowice’s part, he confirmed that the partnership with Palestinian Fund is not limited to single project, pointing out to the current outstanding experience through the existing project calls for search to strengthen cooperation through other new projects.

He added that the Italian Cooperation Foundation is looking forward to launching the second phase of the project soon which will serve a new number of aspirants to establish their own projects or expand those existing projects in order to create sustainable employment opportunities that contribute to reducing unemployment and poverty.

In turn, Al-Husari said that the next phase of the project both in terms of granting loans and guaranteeing loans, estimated at 10 million Euros as a soft loan form the Italian Cooperation that will be characterized by the advanced technical level which will be provided by PFESP in providing guidance and providing business development services through the unified business services centers in each governorate of the national governorates which will provide services the individuals, cooperatives, registered and unregistered companies and foundations wishing to register as it is also a destination for a citizen or a group of citizens wishing to create job opportunities and a source of capacity building as it provides the financial, administrative, technical and legal consultation, and provides a point of contact between the initiator and all the services and supporting that he needs to launch his economic initiatives and ensure its success from incubators or business accelerators, financiers or institutions of lending and information and data needed by the initiator, in addition to providing advices and solutions to the problem that they may face during the implementation of initiatives or the case of stumbled.

It is noteworthy that the first phase of the project included the distribution of the first section of the credit line amounted of 7 million Euros to lending institutions based on a set of criteria identified by the project, including the portfolio size and other indicators such as number of branches, number of the borrowers of women and other standards, on the other hand, each institution of the partner lending institutions committed to manage the allocated amount of it as a revolving fund for seven years to finance individuals, medium companies, small and small-enterprises, limited or no access to finance, with giving priority to targeted groups by the project.