Denmark to spend $800 m to aid small, medium businesses

Denmark’s government will spend about 4 billion kroner ($800 million) to help exporters in its latest push to drag the country out of recession.

“It’s essential that small and medium-sized businesses have the opportunity to create growth and new jobs,” Lene Espersen, minister for the economy and business, said today in a statement posted on her Copenhagen-based ministry’s Web site. The measures include credit guarantees for exporters and extended loans for small and medium-sized businesses. The government has in the past year introduced two bank packages, pushed through tax cuts and freed some pension savings to stimulate Scandinavia’s smallest economy. Today’s package was formed by the Liberal-Conservative coalition and its parliamentary allies the Danish People’s Party and Liberal Alliance.