Christian Levie

Circular entrepreneurship requires other forms of financial cooperation: bilateral financing between a bank and a client is no longer enough. But circular entrepreneurs too often make the mistake of retaining ownership of their product if they want to offer it as a service. By co-creating a product-service combination with a financial partner or integrator, they transfer ownership of the assets. There’s no pre-financing and their revenue and spending are aligned. The integrator manages relations and agreements between the different suppliers, financial service providers and clients.

Econocom is in favour of new tax incentives for eco-design, repairability and recyclability, as well as a reduction in VAT (in Belgium) from 21% to 6% for products and services that help make optimal use of raw materials through repairs and recycling. 

Requests for loans from firms seeking to innovate through circular projects present investment risks that are still too high in relation to the potential return on investment. Solutions exist to spread this risk, like credit insurance and guarantee funds, whether combined or not. These forms of risk cover aren’t known well enough or used sufficiently.