The people’s paper ISSUE NO. 1843
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REPRESENTATIVES from seven Benidorm hospitality and in dustrylinked industries visited Madrid last week. They were received by Igna cio Diaz, a highranking official and spokesman at the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism, together with Miguel Sanz, director of Turespaña, which promotes tourism out side Spain. The representatives per suaded the Spain’s govern ment to review the possibility of applying the ERTE furlough scheme introduced during the State of Alarm to their sectors. “Since the start of the Covid 19 pandemic, takings have fall en between 50 and 60 per cent and now we are approaching the worst time of year,” said Raul Parra, president of shop keepers’ association, AICO. “We need the government to act now and come up with solutions to prevent dozens of businesses from closing.” The Ministry assured the
Photo credit: ABRECA
29 Oct - 4 Nov 2020
MADRID MEETING: Representatives from Benidorm’s tourism-linked sectors at the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism.
Benidorm where many are finding it impossible to pay the high rents. Diaz also assured the Benidorm delegation that the central government is currently working on a 12month exten sion of the deadline for repay ing Institute of Official Credit (ICO) loans. These would ordinarily come due next March or April, but businessowners will instead be given a year to try to sta bilise their finances before hav ing to pay up, AICO and ABRE CA revealed after the meeting. “The meeting had some good things, like these two an nouncements,” Parra said.
Turn to page 2 » Benidorm associations that the government is planning future benefits. These include nonre payable grants towards renting commercial premises, a per manent headache for small and mediumbusinesses espe cially in municipalities like