Three questions for…
Maria Kiczka-Halit, head of the project
reboot
Many people with a migration background and refugee experiences want to start a business in Germany. Financing their own company often turns out to be a key challenge. In an interview with the head of the neustart project, we discuss the reasons for this and possible solutions.
How do people with refugee experiences finance their start-ups?
There are essentially three ways of financing. There are those who were lucky enough to be able to bring money from their home country. Then, of course, we also try to get grants or loans from the job center for our founders. These are usually around 5,000 euros, but can also be up to 20,000 euros. There is also the option of microcredits from the Investitionsbank Berlin. These loans go up to 25,000 euros. However, such sums are only granted in exceptional cases and, above all, only when there is a certain degree of certainty that the money can be repaid.
The path to finding investors has not yet been explored very well. This is certainly because they naturally want a certain level of security that their investment will be worthwhile and that they can generate profits. This is difficult for people with refugee experience due to the residency laws.
What challenges are currently faced in financing start-ups by people with refugee experiences?
A major challenge is the context of the Residence Act, which limits the stay of many people with refugee experiences to 2 to 3 years. Even for loans of up to 25,000 euros, repaying the loan over three years is very ambitious; anything over 25,000 euros is actually unthinkable. As a result, people tend to finance their start-up on their own. This means that the start-up takes a very long time or cannot take place at all.
At the job center, we see the challenge that the focus remains clearly on placing benefit recipients in dependent employment. From the job center's point of view, starting a business is not yet equivalent to this, which makes financing start-up projects much less likely. Nevertheless, we now have cases in which the job center does award large sums of money. So it is not impossible.
What kind of support will be needed in the future from politics and business when it comes to people with refugee experiences starting up businesses?
There are many models that can be imagined to make financing start-ups more successful. For example, the job center grants and the IBB microcredits could be combined, so that out of a total of 15,000 euros in start-up investment, perhaps only 5,000 euros are paid back to the IBB and 10,000 euros are given as a grant by the job center.
For me, however, a key point is that we need to work on the priority for placement. In the future, the job center must treat starting a business on the same level as taking up employment that requires social insurance contributions. This should be done according to the motto "Start-ups for everyone."
Thirdly, there should be a more reliable promise of residency for people with refugee experience in Germany at the political level. This would make it much easier for banks to grant loans. The rate of stay for people with refugee experience from Syria is already 97%. There should be no concern for these people that a shortened stay will make it impossible to repay loans.
