The Chamber Of Barcelona Claims That 25% Of Direct Government Aid To Companies And The Self-employed By The COVID Go To Catalonia

The Barcelona Chamber of Commerce ask the government that destined to Cataluña a quarter of direct aid to Business Y autonomous affected by the restrictions decreed to contain the Covid pandemic.

The aid plan approved by the Minister council last week is divided into 3.000 million euros for the financial debt restructuring fund, 1.000 million for the business solvency support fund and 7.000 million in direct aid [2.000 para Canarias y Baleares y 5.000 para las comunidades peninsulares y las dos ciudades autónomas].

For the distribution criterion to be “fair”, the Chamber of Barcelona considers that 1.250 Millions of this last amount should go to Catalonia due to the different intensity of the restrictions that have been applied in the autonomous communities during the second and third waves of the coronavirus.

The institution led by a group of businessmen related to the Catalan National Assembly [Eines de País] considers that the regional percentage of workers in ERTE would be a good indicator to chop up the 5,000 million. Thus, the Chamber states that, at the end of February, in Catalonia there were 190,902 people in a situation of temporary unemployment, which would represent 25% of the total in Spain excluding island territories. Instead, he adds as an example, Madrid’s community Two weeks ago, 15% of the employees were concentrated in ERTE. The entity emphasizes that the central region has not suffered “such severe restrictions” in recent months and its economy has functioned “practically normally”.

For the distribution of European fonds React-EU, the Government took into account at the end of last year the impact of the pandemic at START of each community. Catalonia accounted for 17.1% of the 10 billion distributed (only behind Andalucía, with 18.8%), while Madrid was assigned 12.8%.

On the other hand, the Chamber of Barcelona describes as “excessive” the period of 40 days established by the Government of Pedro Sánchez to carry out the transfer of funds to the autonomous communities, which will be responsible for the subsequent distribution of these direct aid to companies and the self-employed who show a drop in their income of at least 30%.