The President of the Government, Pedro Sanchez, has announced a state aid plan for the areas affected by the the DANA in the Valencian Community. It consists of direct aid and fiscal and labor measures for a total of 10,600 million euros, and will be expanded as needs arise. The package includes a new line of guarantees, called ICO-DANA, for 5,000 million Euros so that SMEs, self-employed and families can request credits guaranteed by the Government to face the expenses suffered by the catastrophe. Mr. Sánchez, who appeared at a press conference after the meeting of the Council of Ministers, detailed that with these loans companies will be able to open their businesses and families will be able to repair their homes “as soon as possible”. The head of the Executive has clarified that they are already talking with the financial entities and that the guarantees will be available next week. The Council of Ministers has approved this Tuesday a first tranche of 1,000 million euros of the total of 5,000 million euros. Mr. Sánchez has declared the area affected by the DANA a “catastrophic zone“. And he has assured that the Response Plan “will last as long as necessary to recover normality in the affected territory”.
Compensation and tax measures
On the other hand, the Insurance Compensation Consortium will start paying this Wednesday the first compensations to those families and companies that have lost their vehicles. They are estimated to be 20% higher than the appraised value of the car. According to Sánchez, the Consortium’s expenses will reach the “unprecedented” figure of 3,500 million euros, after having received more than 70,000 applications so far. “From tomorrow, but fundamentally from Friday, many of the resources will be transferred by the compensation consortium”, he reiterated. Among the fiscal measures, the second payment of the IRPF tax return is delayed for Valencian taxpayers whose return was paid, as well as moratoriums and exemptions in the IBI, Economic Activities Tax or processing fee for vehicle deregistration. The first package of measures approved today, under the name of ‘Immediate Response, Reconstruction and Relaunching Plan for the Valencian Community’, contemplates direct aid for 78 municipalities (75 in the Valencian Community, 2 in Castilla-La Mancha and 1 in Andalusia), and subsidies of up to 72,000 euros for cases of disability “without income limit”, which means quadrupling the public aid foreseen in the law. At the same time, between 20,000 and 60,000 euros will be granted for the repair of damaged homes; up to 10,300 euros to change or repair furniture, household appliances and fixtures; and up to 37,000 euros to repair elements of the neighbors’ communities.
Future aid for SMEs and the self-employed
For SMEs and the self-employed in the most severely affected areas, direct aid of 838 million euros will be provided. This aid will amount to 5,000 euros for the self-employed and will range from 10,000 to 150,000 euros for companies, depending on their turnover. To receive them, it will be sufficient to indicate the bank account number and they will start to be collected in less than a month. The benefit is estimated to reach some 65,000 self-employed workers and some 30,000 companies.
