Economic policy Greens criticise guarantee for travel group FTI
Being wound up: Travel group FTI Photo
© Sven Hoppe/dpa
During the Corona pandemic, the federal and state governments helped the tour operator with loans and guarantees. The Bavarian Greens are now complaining about a waste of Bavarian taxpayers’ money.
The Bavarian Greens have criticized the state’s guarantee granted to the Munich-based travel group FTI during the Corona crisis. At the time, the federal government had granted FTI a loan of around 600 million euros, and several states also took over Guarantees, including the Free State of Bavaria: It guaranteed a working capital loan of almost 193 million euros to FTI. “Unfortunately, the time has now come; almost 200 million euros of state guarantees have been irretrievably thrown away,” says Green Party member of the state parliament Ludwig Hartmann.
Europe’s third-largest travel group went bankrupt on September 1st and is now being wound up. Hartmann is calling for a more restrictive guarantee policy from the Free State. “The CSU can no longer decide arbitrarily in its black box to bet on economically dead horses with high tax sums.” The guarantee was just an expensive life-prolonging measure.
According to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the guaranteed loan is partially secured. It is unclear how much money the Free State will ultimately get back in the insolvency proceedings. “Adequate risk provisions were made in the 2024/2025 double budget.” Last year, Bavaria issued 1,144 guarantees with a total volume of 222 million euros; the default rate of all guarantees was just under 1.9 percent.
dpa
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