Abstract:

There is a perceptible increase in business subsidies experienced in Latvia since 2004, when Latvia became a full member of the European Union. Since this time, Latvia has significantly segmented the forms of subsidies for support to the business development projects, with a special contribution provided to the development of infrastructure necessary for business, creation of innovations with high added value, as well as access to funding. At the same time, practice demonstrates a significant number of business projects which, within a short period of time after receipt of public funding, become insolvent or do not actually achieve the results for which the award of public funding has taken place. The study aims to explore the feasibility of assessing the development projects applied for public funding and to create an optimal low-risk multi-criteria evaluation system, at the same time keeping in balance the results of financial, economic and social factors. Within the framework of the research, its authors have carried out investigation into the impact of public funding in business, analysed the experience of Latvia within the framework of public funding, developed a AHP-BOCR methodology-based evaluation model for allocation of public funding and approved it. The methods of economic analysis are used for the quantification of results of the multi-criteria evaluation model in order to compare the obtained results with the assessment of existing projects and to determine whether the multi-criteria evaluation provides a more objective evaluation result.