Alicante contributes 14.7 million euros to support sectors affected by COVID-19
The aid aims to support the hospitality sector as well as other sectors such as leisure, culture, and travel agencies.
Wednesday 3rd February 2021 | ALVARO MONFORT (Xàbia AL DÍA)
The Alicante Provincial Council will contribute 14.7 million euros to the aid plan for the hospitality industry and other sectors affected by COVID-19 that the Generalitat Valenciana, the provincial councils and city councils of the Comunidad Valenciana have launched. The provincial administration will finance 22.5% of the subsidies corresponding to each beneficiary municipality. The province as a whole will receive a total of 65.3 million euros.
As outlined in a statement, the president of the Alicante Provincial Council, Carlos Mazón, has signed the decree backing Plan Resistir that, as he has indicated, must be accompanied by tax exemptions for the self-employed and companies. “Despite the economic effort that the administrations involved are making, direct aid will be insufficient to meet the needs of the thousands and thousands of companies that are being affected by the crisis if the central government does not approve a reduction in the tax burden on these groups”.
Mazón has demanded that the president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Ximo Puig “stand before Pedro Sánchez to approve the reduction of the self-employed contributions and the maximum tax burden given the situation we have.” The president of the provincial administration considers that the exclusion of companies with more than ten workers from this aid package is not justified: “With these criteria imposed by the Generalitat, practically all the hotels in our province are outside the plan, in addition of many restaurants, shops and businesses that, due to their characteristics, have more extensive staff ”, he complained.
In addition to the 14.7 million euros that the Alicante Provincial Council will make available to the hospitality industry and other sectors such as leisure, culture and travel agencies through Plan Resistir, the administration will also enable a fund of 9 million euros through the Department of Economic Development to help the self-employed, SMEs, micro-SMEs and professionals in the province to alleviate the economic losses derived from the crisis.
Although initially this amount was estimated at 6 million euros (the same as in 2020), the provincial government team has decided to increase it to 9 million due to the successive closures and restrictions that the health situation is causing with the consequent losses for businesses .
The subsidies, which will be distributed to all the municipalities according to population, will be processed through the municipalities, paying special attention to the most affected sectors and taking into account aspects such as the rise in fixed costs such as the insurance, self-employed fees or energy rates.
Likewise, the Alicante Provincial Council will collaborate with the municipalities in the reactivation of the productive sectors of their municipalities, thanks to the Plan +Cerca that will be launched in 2021 and is estimated to be worth more than 30 million euros.
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