The funds are part of a total 5.7 billion litai economic stimulus plan that included 2 billion litai for the beleagured construction industry. Photo by Nathan Greenhalgh/Baltic Reports

VILNIUS — Lithuania’s National Audit Office says that the country’s economic stimulus for small and medium-sized businesses has not been implemented properly, with only 155 million litai out of the total 2.1 billion litai (€608 million) allocated.

The funds are part of a total 5.7 billion litai (€1.6 billion) economic stimulus plan that has encountered delays in implementation. Money for Lithuania’s the beleagured construction industry was included, too.

The stimulus plan was approved by the government in early 2009, paid for with European Union structural funds and state-guaranteed private loans, and was supposed to help businesses get loans that they would otherwise not have had access to. The plan was one of the government’s biggest tools to righting the wobbly economy.

“An implementation of the Ministry of Economy’s development plan for small and medium-sized businesses was an important and necessary measure in the economic crisis, but they have not been sufficiently effective for a long period of implementation and only relatively small amounts of business credits reached their targets,” Giedrė Švedienė, state inspector said.

The audit’s results jar with earlier government trumpeting of the plan’s effectiveness. Minister of Economy Dainius Kreivys said that 2009 was extremely difficult economically and that the country could not have expected great results from the program.

“The year 2009 was the most serious for the Lithuanian economy over a long period of time, thus it was not realistic to expect small and medium business development,” Kreivys said. Nevertheless Kreivys credits the program with saving 40,000 jobs.

The auditors found that because of the small amount of finance that was moved to businesses, the plan was not effective and didn’t change the course of the crisis in Lithuania.

The ministry defended its policy saying that the auditors had only looked at part of their plan. They failed to control measures for exporting companies, the EU’s support for development, enterprise development and renovation of public buildings.

The ministry also claims that there were factual errors in the report from the auditors, particularly around the Invega company, which facilitates public funding for SMEs. The ministry argues that 146.7 million litai would not have been loaned if not for Invega.

The ministry also questioned the methodology of the report, saying that anonymous sources had been used.

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