The Court of Auditors has published a report that endorses the Fund to Support the Solvency of Strategic Companies (FASEE) launched by the State Society of Industrial Participations (SEPI) in 2020 and 2021 to face the effects of the Covid-19 crisis.
According to its opinion, these aid were granted based on 13 eligibility criteria pre-established by the European Commission and SEPI. “properly applied the regulations regarding compliance with these requirements and its financing conditions.”
The fund received 74 requests for temporary financial support in the amount of 5,393 million euros, the note highlights, 53% of the total amount of 10,000 million for which it had been provided; and the total of approved operations finally amounted to 30, for an amount of 3,256 million.
The average amount of aid requested, which can be returned until 2029, was 72.8 million euros, from which the Court of Auditors deduced that the majority of large companies did not resort to this financial support.
Of the 30 beneficiary companies, twelve were tourism companies, seven industrial, five from the engineering sector, five airlines and one from the services sector.
The report indicates that the SEPI developed a procedure to process requests “a“compliant with the regulations and guarantee for the evaluation of the applications”, by hiring external advisors.
Although the Court of Auditors notes that the average processing time for aid applications was 355 days, an excessively long period due to the complexity of the mechanism that made the fund less effective, it values that the processing of applications was done in a non-discriminatory manner. .
The fund’s management costs amounted to 23.3 million euros, of which 14.2 million were general and personnel costs of SEPI, the note adds.
