The government’s two flagship export schemes for businesses announced two years ago are both yet to helped a single firm, it has emerged.

The £5bn Export Refinancing Scheme was launched in July 2012 as part of the Treasury’s UK Guarantees scheme. At the time ministers claimed it would be up and running by the end of 2012 but answers to Parliamentary Questions tabled by Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna reveal it has still not helped a single business and is not yet operational.

Additionally, the government’s £1.5bn Direct Lending Scheme launched which launched seven months ago has not helped a single firm either, answers to Parliamentary questions by Mr Umunna show. So far it has received only had 15 enquiries and just one firm has actually put in an application for support under the scheme, which was first announced in the 2012 Autumn Statement.

Both programmes were supposed to help more firms export, and follow the failure of the government’s previous flagship programme designed for this purpose, the Export Enterprise Finance Guarantee scheme which was abandoned by ministers after it emerged that it had only assisted five firms.

The revelation will cause embarrassment for ministers at the start of UKTI’s annual Exports Week which begins today. The latest ONS trade statistics found that the UK’s trade deficit more than trebled in January compared with December, with goods exports falling in three months to January and exports of goods to countries outside EU down more than within EU.

Last year UK Export Finance spent less than a fifth of the financial support made available to businesses – of the £25bn made available more than £20bn was left gathering dust in government coffers.

Responding to the export measures announced in the Budget last month, the IFS’ verdict was that these were “relatively small and are unlikely to make a substantial difference to the weak performance of UK investment and exports”.  It has recently been reported that the government has considered dropping its target of getting 100,000 businesses exporting by 2020.

Commenting, Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna MP said:

“Ministers promised an export-led recovery, but the truth is that they are badly letting down British business. Scheme after scheme which were supposed to help more firms export have failed to have any impact whatsoever, and now we learn that two programmes which were announced to great fanfare two years ago haven’t helped a single firm.

“We desperately need to get more businesses exporting to boost middle-income jobs, grow our way out of the cost-of-living crisis and so we can ensure Britain can compete. As we’ve seen with so many of the Tory-led government’s promises, they have completely failed to deliver.

“Where this government has failed, the next Labour government will boost exports, innovation and investment as part of Agenda 2030, our plan for better-balanced, sustainable growth.”