Royal Decree 463/2020, March 14th, declaring the state of alarm, prohibits, limits or restricts certain activities. The measures adopted have an obvious impact on economic activity.
In an attempt to mitigate this impact, the Government approved a series of complementary measures, some of which, have a direct impact on the audiovisual industry, mostly made of SMEs and self-employed workers.
Those measures are included in Royal Decree-Law 8/2020, March 17th. Amongst the measures included in the legal provision, we would like to highlight the following:
- Supplementary allowance for self-employed workers whose activities have been suspended, applicable also to those who have seen their turnover in the month prior to the application for the allowance has fallen at least 75% from the average turnover of the previous six-month period.
- Setting up a guarantee line, backed by the State, for a maximum amount of 100,000 million euros, to underwrite the financing granted by financial institutions to companies and self-employed workers to meet their liquidity needs.
- Increasing the net borrowing limit of the Official Credit Institute (ICO) by an additional 10,000 million euros, to provide additional liquidity to companies, especially SMEs and self-employed workers.
- Creation of an insurance coverage line of up to 2,000 million euros, charged to the Internationalisation Risk Reserve Fund (“Fondo de Reserva de los Riesgos de la Internacionalización”).
Additionally, by Decree-Law 8/2020, the Catalan government approved subsidies and economic aids in order to alleviate the adverse effects on its beneficiaries, the most relevant of those measures being:
- Extend the deadline to comply with the goals for which the subsidy was granted or to justify their achievement.
- Finance the expenses incurred by the beneficiaries, even if the goal imposed by the subsidy has not been fully achieved.
- Adopt other measures to prevent any damages to the beneficiaries of subsidies arising from the undertakings they entered into at the time they had been granted.
In addition, the Department of Culture, through the Catalan Institute of Cultural Companies (ICEC), and the Catalan Institute of Finance (ICF) has launched a credit line of 10 million euros for cultural entities and companies with projects related to the production, distribution, marketing, dissemination, exhibition or protection of cultural goods and/or services, affected by the situation of COVID-19 and are in need of liquidity. The loans, without commission fees, range from 20,000 to 300,000 euros and have a maximum term of five years, including a grace period of one year. The Department of Culture underwrites 80% of the risk of the operations.