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MVEDC Forms Partnership to Aid Foreign Investment
COLUMBUS, Ohio – MidAmerican Global Ventures LLC announced Thursday that it has entered into a “strategic marketing partnership agreement” with the Mahoning Valley Economic Development Corp., Liberty Township, to promote EB-5 financing for job-creating projects in the Mahoning Valley.
Created by Congress in 1990 to stimulate foreign investment and job creation in the United States, the Employment-Based Fifth Preference Program, or EB-5, makes qualified foreign investors eligible for an employment-based visa, called an EB-5 visa, if it invests a minimum of $1 million in a commercial enterprise that creates at least 10 full-time American jobs. In rural areas or areas with high unemployment, investors must invest at least $500,000 and create 10 jobs.
MidAmerican Global operates U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services-approved EB-5 regional centers in northwestern, central and eastern Ohio. In all, 41 of the 88 counties in Ohio are in MidAmerican’s regional center territory.
“We look forward to working with MidAmerican Global Ventures to attract and leverage foreign investment that will help finance new and expanding projects and ultimately help grow the Mahoning Valley economy and create new jobs,” said Michael R. Conway, MVEDC executive director.
MidAmerican Global and MVEDC will hold regional EB-5 workshops this fall and meet with area developers, business owners and other lending institutions to identify projects for financing.
The EB-5 program is “a powerful economic development tool to finance projects and create new jobs,” said Brian K. Hicks, managing director of MidAmerican Global Ventures, in a prepared statement.
“Foreign direct investment is an important component of a diversified economy, which is why Congress established the EB-5 program many years ago,” he continued. “While most of the investment dollars have been coming from China recently and we will continue to devote time in China, we are also talking with investors in Latin America and Eastern Europe. There is a lot of interest in Ohio and I believe Ohio and the Mahoning Valley have a lot to offer immigrant investors.”
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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