Except in the Overseas Territories, the solidarity fund, set up in March 2020 to help companies affected by the coronavirus crisis, is extended in September but will be definitively deleted at the end of this month, announced the Minister of Economy, Bruno Le Maire, this Monday.
The solidarity fund will be extended in September under the same conditions as in August, namely a compensation of 20% of turnover, but, new element, companies must have achieved at least 15% of their turnover. ‘before the crisis, the government wanted to avoid the “windfall effects” for those who prefer to remain completely closed.
Events, tourism and mountain
“All the support mechanisms will be maintained for the overseas departments which are still subject to administrative closure obligations”, also assured Bruno Le Maire. In addition, specific action plans will be put in place for three sectors: events, travel agencies and mountain professionals, sectors where activity is struggling to restart.
Professional organizations will meet with the minister during the first week of November to discuss the rest of this support, said Bruno Le Maire. He finally indicated that the future of loans guaranteed by the State (PGE) would be discussed at another meeting, in the presence of the French Banking Federation (FBF).
“Economic activity at 99% of its capacity”
In addition, while “the country’s economic activity is running at 99% of its pre-crisis capacities”, the implementation of the health pass in places open to the public at the beginning of August “had no impact. on the country’s economic activity, ”declared Bruno Le Maire, after a meeting with employers’ organizations. “In bars and restaurants, credit card spending increased by 5% the week of August 9”, that of the start of the introduction of the pass, “and by 8% the following week” compared to 2019 , justified the minister, recognizing however “one or two exceptions” as “the shopping centers”.
Bruno Le Maire, however, assured that companies in difficulty would continue to benefit from support through the fixed cost support system, which will take over from the solidarity fund on October 1 and will be extended to all companies in the sectors. tourism and related activities, while it was limited to those with more than one million euros in turnover.