Mario Cantalapiedra – Economist
The Official Credit Institute (ICO) has published a summary of the data, at the end of 2020, of the Guarantee Line planned to cover liquidity needs motivated by COVID-19.
In this sense, it must be remembered that in Spain, unlike other neighboring countries, the aid system has focused on guaranteeing bank loans to companies and the self-employed, and not so much on granting them direct type grants. Although these guaranteed loans may help companies, they involve new debt that will have to be repaid, something that would not happen if they had obtained non-refundable grants. It is true that with the extension of the initial grace periods by the Government, many companies will not have to start paying them back until March 2022, but sooner or later they will have to.
Despite the above, the Guarantee Line has been widely used by Spanish companies as shown by the data published by the ICO. Thus, of the amount initially planned by the Government of 100,000 million euros, by the end of 2020 87,085 million euros have already been consumed, which has implied 114,647 million euros of financing for companies.
Almost 600,000 companies They have been beneficiaries of the guarantees, of which 99 percent are self-employed and SMEs, groups greatly affected by the pandemic and the majority in our country. The number of operations signed has been 944,588 (in this sense, a company can sign more than one operation, since the aid limit is by guaranteed amount and not by number of operations).
By autonomous communities, Catalonia was the one with the highest number of guaranteed operations in 2020, with a total of 183,466, which represented financing of 21,125.9 million euros for its companies. Next were Andalusia (149,925 operations and 13,868 million), and the Community of Madrid (132,590 operations and 24,137.9 million).
Regarding the classification by activity sectors, the largest number of transactions were signed by tourism, leisure and culture companies, followed by construction and infrastructure companies.
ICO COVID-19 Liquidity Guarantee Line. Summary of guarantees granted as of 12/31/2020Source: Own elaboration from ICO data.
Until the June 1 The self-employed and companies that so wish can still apply for loans guaranteed by the Guarantee Line, which can be granted up to June 30th.
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