Authorities intend to restart the economy immediately after the emergency ceases, and are prepared to come with other support measures, according to Finance Minister Florin Cîţu.
In a video message posted on his Facebook page, the head of Finances shows that this is an atypical crisis that no one has ever faced and for which there are no lessons from the past.
„I decided to go out more often to explain how I see things. It›s an atypical crisis, an economic crisis that overlaps with a health crisis. I don›t think there is anyone who has gone through this so there are no lessons to be learned. We may have been inspired by past crises, but I do not know if everything will work. Therefore, the measures we take may not be perfect, but we are ready to come up with new measures immediately, depending on how we see the impact in the economy,“ said the Minister of Finance.
He stressed that the measures taken by the Executive on Wednesday are aimed at maintaining the production capacity and the employees prepared for the period immediately following the state of emergency. „We want the economy to be ready to to restart immediately,“ Cîţu said, according to Agerpres.
He also explained that measures such as supporting SMEs by offering cheap financing or technical unemployment have also been adopted by other EU countries and must work together to maintain production capacity in the economy.
„If you are an SME and you have been affected during this crisis you have immediate access to financing. You can go to a bank, get a credit line for investments, for working capital. The interest is 100% state subsidized during the period of state of emergency and a few months after that, and loans are guaranteed for up to 90% depending on the size of the loan. If you want to reconfigure your business, there is now a demand for mask production for example, and you can purchase a production line, there is cheap financing for these SMEs. The second measure is the one referring to the technical unemployment. If you have a company that has been affected by the declaration of state of emergency and the activity has been totally or partially stopped and you decide with the employees that you want to benefit from technical unemployment, the state pays 75% of the basic salary but not more than 75% of the average salary in the economy,“ said the Minister of Finance.