The Canary Islands guarantees state aid will be available ‘as soon as possible’

The regional government made a guarantee yesterday that it will streamline and implement the necessary instruments that allows the billion euros of direct aid that the Canary Islands will receive from the State, to reach to companies most damaged by the crisis "as soon as physically possible".

The Minister of Economy and Employment, Elena Máñez, stressed that the different ministries involved in this initiative are already "hard at work" analyzing and defining how these subsidies will be distributed, which are complementary to those launched by the regional Government, with the aim of offering solvency to companies that are having the worst time.

On Friday the Council of Ministers approved a plan of 11 billion euros for companies and the self-employed affected by the restrictions of the pandemic, of which 7 billion are direct aid. The Canary Islands will be able to benefit from more than a billion of these subsidies that will be of up to 3,000 euros for the self-employed, and will range between 4,000 and 200,000 euros for companies. To receive them, companies must have registered a drop in their income of at least 30% in 2020.

Once the royal decree has been published by the central government, in the next 30 days, the agreement with the Ministry of Finance must be formalized and ten days after that the money must be entered into the accounts of the autonomous community. From then on, in May, it will be when the Canary Islands publish their requirements, since legally "you have to have the money entered to call for subsidies."

At the moment, the Government departments involved in this initiative are already working on how to articulate the aid, which can be complemented with the Canary Islands. In this sense, the councillor stressed that the State allows allocating more expenses, such as payment to suppliers or debt payments, and also includes sectors that were outside the subsidies called by the regional Executive.

The Canary Islands must make a proposal to Madrid on how to organize the distribution of these funds "and they will continue to seek formulas for administrative streamlining so that these grants arrive as soon as possible," insists Máñez.

The Minister of Economy stressed that this is a “very important initiative which will mean more than a billion euros for companies in the islands, and complements the aid that has already been launched during the crisis, not only by the Government of the Canary Islands, but by the state itself.” In this sense, she explained that the archipelago has had 2 billion euros for workers in ERTE and that around 27,000 island companies have availed themselves of ICO credits.

“The objective of the regional government is that the largest amount of resources reaches the companies that need it the most,” assured the Minister of Economy and Employment, "we are going to optimize these resources so that they reach the companies that are experiencing the worst as soon as possible."