Low income people to get €60m in pandemic allocation

The government on Thursday decided in its fifth supplementary budget proposal for 2020 to allocate EUR 60 million in temporary financing to compensate for the costs incurred due to the COVID-19 epidemic.

The proposal focuses only on the essential appropriations that must be processed before the sixth supplementary budget proposal for 2020, which the government plans to submit to parliament on 29 October, said the finance ministry of Finance in a press release.

The appropriation of EUR 60 million is proposed in temporary compensation to help mitigate the effects of the epidemic. The compensation would be used to support the most economically disadvantaged people and families in society in situations where the restrictive measures imposed due to the COVID-19 epidemic have generated additional costs.

The aid would cover persons who have received basic social assistance during the period of restrictions, if they continue to receive basic social assistance during the payment period in autumn 2020.

A new variable appropriation of EUR 2 million is proposed for compensation related to the bankruptcy of tour operators.

It would be used to compensate consumers for cancellations of travel packages due to the COVID-19 situation, if they cannot be reimbursed from the guarantees provided by tour operators.

An appropriation of EUR 30 million is proposed to supplement the compensation for costs incurred to agriculture, horticulture, and rural businesses.

Conversely, the expenditure estimate for support for the cost of business will be reduced by EUR 30 million.

The fifth supplementary budget proposal reduces net borrowing requirement to EUR 17.6 billion.

Taking into account the increase of EUR 1,021 million in actual revenues and the reduction of EUR 234 million in appropriations proposed, the fifth supplementary budget proposal for 2020 will reduce the central government’s net borrowing requirement by EUR 1.3 billion.

The government’s net borrowing in 2020 is expected to total about EUR 17.6 billion. The amount of government debt at the end of 2020 is estimated to be approximately EUR 124 billion, which is around 52 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).