Azorean companies to benefit from new measure and another 100 million Euros to support employment maintenance
The Regional Government has regulated the immediate implementation of the Employment Maintenance Programme, another measure to support the regional economy.
With the aim of ensuring that Azorean companies using national lines of credit will benefit from additional support to repay these loans, the Regional Government will allocate 100 million Euros to regional companies to support the maintenance of jobs.
This measure proves to be very important to encourage the maintenance of jobs. In fact, it will protect Azorean companies using the national lines of credit against an eventual rise in debt in the medium-term.
The implementation of another measure also aims to provide a sign of stability and confidence in the future.
Published by the Resolution of the Council of the Government no.87/2020, this support measure will enable Azorean companies, when reimbursing the funds allocated under the national line of credit for treasury support, to receive support from the Regional Government to settle these debts, thus relieving their treasury in a future repayment phase, starting next year.
This will adjust the financial effort of companies with the improvement of market conditions.
Additionally, it will also ensure that the use of lines of credit will not entail an increase in companies' indebtedness, as long as they maintain their jobs until the end of the year.
This measure, together with others already announced by the Regional Government, ensures that companies in the sectors of activity that were forced to suspend or register a substantial reduction in their activity will have the necessary financial conditions to maintain jobs and continue their activity. It will prevent the use of line of credit from resulting in increased indebtedness for companies in the medium-term.
This support is conditional on the maintenance of the level of employment until the end of this year, at a time when it is essential for the Regional Government that people keep their jobs and that companies are able to promote this maintenance, so the Government has allowed this programme to be combined with other national and even regional support measures already under way.
The support now implemented ensures that micro companies can benefit up to 5.2 minimum wages on a non-reimbursable basis per worker, plus Social Security contributions, an amount that will be paid to companies in quarterly and constant instalments.
In the case of small and medium-sized companies, the support will be up to 3.6 minimum wages per worker and in the remaining cases 2.4 wages per worker.
This innovative measure at national level is yet another effort to create structural and differentiating measures within the reach of the Regional Government's powers, thus providing companies with better conditions and increased support when compared with other companies in the country.
Hence, the Regional Government, with the measures recently made available to the business community, reinforces the conditions and incentives in order to prevent Azorean companies from making redundancies. It also creates incentives and support to help companies maintaining their workers at minimal cost so that we can jointly overcome this period of adversity.