The 130 bidders were selected from 414 applications.
£697m of the £1.05bn pot (which includes £55m recycled from rounds one and two) will go to 101 companies in the private sector including. A further £358m will go to 29 intermediary organisations such as local authorities and local enterprise partnerships.
Private sector winners include construction equipment manufacturers Caterpillar and Komatsu in the northeast, as well as Cat subsidiary Perkins Engines, Cummins Generators, and Tata Steel UK Rail Consultancy. Also benefiting from funding is Cementation Skanska.
The government justifies the use of British taxpayer subsidies to help these multi-billion-pound US, Japanese, Indian and Swedish corporate giants that already have more money than Croesus on the basis that every pound given in aid generates £6 in private investment.
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