The third round of the Business Basic Grants, which was placed on hold due to a nation-wide outage following huge demand from small businesses through the online portal SmartyGrants, will relaunch next week.
Round 3 of the Business Basics grants will open for applications at 9am on Monday 16 May for Regional Queensland and at 9am on Tuesday 17 May for South East Queensland small businesses
“We understand the stress and frustration of small business operators who were attempting to apply for the Business Basics grants on 4 May,” Small Business Minister Di Farmer said.
“The program was closed as soon as the issue was identified, which affected all SmartyGrants users across Australia and internationally.
“The portal has been extensively tested by the external provider, Our Community, who has given an assurance that the portal is safe and stable and the grants program can proceed.
Smarty Grants operator, Our Community, was forced to apologise for the debacle that frustrated tens of thousands of small businesses for hours.
CEO Denis Moriarty issued a statement apologising for the stress and interruption .
“Our Community has also made a commitment to my department to provide additional support in the assessment of the grant applications to ensure that there will be no loss of time in announcing successful applicants for this grant round,” Ms Farmer said.