Covid 19 – Spanish Government Economic Bailout Begins
The Spanish Government of Pedro Sanchez has approved a series of economic and financial measures for those economically vulnerable to the state of emergency lockdown and the economic fallout that has brought the Spanish economy to an abrupt halt.
The Cabinet approved a series of measures to alleviate the situation for vulnerable workers with the folowing provisions:
- Suspend Social Security contributions for up to six months with no interest
- Social Security Debts payments can be deferred by up to 6 month
- Freezing of all home evictions
- Automatic renewal of current rental contract by 6 months.
- No interest Micro Fund Credit for people to pay rent – repayable for up to 10 years.
- Large landlords will be obliged to restructure rents including cuts of up to 50% on present contracts.
- Mortage payment holidays for self employed workers without work.
- Ddelayed payment provision on mortgages for commercial premises and offices for self-employed workers.
- Consumer loan holiday of up to 3 months being studied.
- Guarantee of home utilities for vulnerable and affected workers ( ERTE)
- Temporary Subsidy for domestic employees
- Temporary workers whose contracts have been terminated due to the state of alarm will receive a €440 payment.
- Temporary Contract workers annulments to be receive up to 80% of value.
Despite rising death rates – the rate of the number of new cases appears to be slowing, due according to the government to the confinement measures introduced on the 16th March. María Jesús Montero, the spokeperson for the coalition government also announced an update to the medical situation by stating that with the latest pandemic data being added to the modelling the country is “ headed in the right direction,” and that “ the pandemic is stabilizing.”
On 1st April the number of coronavirus cases in Spain is 102,136 of which 9,053 have died and 22,647 have been discharged and 5,872 remain in critical care.