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Gov’t to fund restaurants, cafes, bars with €330 million so they can open again

Greece’s food service sector will be boosted with working capital totalling 330 million euros to buy raw materials when it reopens, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said after a meeting with ministers and sector representatives on Thursday.

Coffee shops, bars and restaurants will be funded through the EU’s National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) 2021-2027, pending the European Commission’s approval, and will help these businesses purchase supplies in the first two or three months of reopening, he clarified.

Thousands of businesses – including, for the first time, franchises – will each receive a non-refundable capital boost of up to 100,000 euros.

“The sector has already received nearly 1 billion euros in funding,” Mitsotakis said, while at least 65,000 of the 77,000 businesses in this sector have benefited from support loans. In addition, he said, “of the sector’s 410,000 workers, nearly 260,000 whose contracts were suspended were reimbursed by the government with 720 million euros that supplemented their wages.”

The prime minister acknowledged that the government is not prepared to offer a reopening date yet, but understands that the sector may be able to recoup some of the revenues lost “because there is great need for people to go outdoors, to have a good time, to eat and have another drink.” The sector has been doing home deliveries or take away during the country’s five-month nationwide lockdown, but seating customers is not allowed.

“We are not expecting to cover losses with the plan we announce today,” Mitsotakis said, “as all Greek economy sectors and businesses have had losses. But we are here to provide the working capital for buying supplies.”

The online application platform ependyseis.gov.gr is scheduled to open in early May and remain open to July 31. Funding must be used by December 31. Evaluations will be processed speedily and the funding disbursed quickly, ministers said.

Elaborating some more, Development & Investments Minister Adonis Georgiadis told Mega TV after the meeting that these businesses are not likely to be reopened before other critical sectors do. He did note they would not reopen anytime over the next two weeks.

According to state broadcaster ERT on Friday morning, the sector could open on April 19 or 26 and for outdoors only.

This financial support concerns businesses whose turnover dropped more than 30%, and will see a return of a 7% of their 2019 turnover.

Tomorrow Saturday, the sector concludes 5 months of shutdown across the country.

According to Greek statistics Authority (ELSTAT), the food service sector suffered losses of 2.28 billion euros in 2020 or 37.7% in compare to 2019. The loss does not seem very big something attributed to the fact that it is based on registered turnover and not the real one.

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4 comments

  1. Marcelis Vanmechelen

    Those who are aware of the Great Reset Plan of the World Economic Forum know that one of the targets is to make people dependent on the government as much as possible. This measure again perfectly fits within this strategy. I’m curious to see what the conditions will be to get such an non-refundable working capital injection.
    If Klaus Schwab (CEO of the WEF) says that the Corona-crisis is “a unique opportunity to push through this Great Reset”, it means that there are people that have big interests to continue this crisis (or did they create it?).

    • so true. everybody in Greece must know that it is a PLAN. the great reset is behind the “covid” curtain… that’s all. guess how many businesses will survive? nothing is non refundable… the govt will take the money back one day!

  2. That’s nice and generous of the Greek government, send money to the business who are in the business of talking money from the public.
    Pity they’re not as generous with sending money to the hospitals and health services.
    Ah! Sorry I forgot they haven’t done that because the pandemic is only a temporary thing, their words not mine.
    Guess what government, it’s a temporary pandemic for all of us.

  3. I wonder – what is the criteria for getting the money? Many who owned restaurants shut their doors for good because they needed help *then*. Will there be a requirement that the entity had to have been established prior to April 2020? My guess is no and newly established restaurants started by friends of the ND party will also qualify. Just yet another way for this corrupt gov’t to pocket the money. Just like the 20M given to a private company for a COVID public awareness campaign. Or the 190M voucher program that was going to be given to 7 companies directly linked to ND but was cancelled only after the opposition made it public. Or the 1M given in the last 5 days without open tenders to brand new companies or companies that don’t even deal in the space by Sofia Nikolaou. Or, or, or.