LINZ. The city of Linz actually wanted to repay 37.5 million euros in liabilities this year – instead, you have to take out new million-dollar loans due to corona. Operationally, at least 60 million euros are missing from the city budget.
“The trend is even upwards, depending on how the last two months of the year will develop,” describes the Linz finance director Christian Schmid, who adds: “We will also be tax deductible in March and April 2021, when this year is then will also have to reckon with a significant drop in income. “
“We will not let anyone down”
After all: the 60 to 70 million euros that the banks have to finance in the short term in the form of loans are currently available “almost at zero cost”, as mayor and financial advisor Klaus Luger puts it.
The various funding and support measures, such as the Linz Corona Solidarity Fund, are also a burden on the financial budget. For the Mayor of Linz a valuable investment and help these days: “We don’t want people who are socially on the brink to fall. We won’t let anyone down. Nevertheless, we need new financial rules in the republic in the future. But we won’t decide that in Linz and not in Upper Austria alone, ”Luger suggests again for a new form of financial equalization.
138 million euros to the country
The direct payments to the state of Upper Austria continued to rise. These rose compared to 2018 in the past year by 4.8 million euros, by 3.6 percent, to 138 million euros – Tips reported. Almost every second euro in funding from the city of Linz goes to the state.
Corona tears a 2.9 billion hole in the country’s budget
But the state of Upper Austria is also struggling with the financial effects of Corona. With a hole of 1.5 billion euros, the corona crisis will affect the Upper Austria this year and next. State budget. The debt brake should therefore be suspended for the time of the Corona crisis. “Nobody can yet estimate what will happen in the second wave,” said Governor Thomas Stelzer. And the corona crisis will continue to have an impact in the next five years. Total is currently from one Net funding balance in the amount of around 2.9 billion euros for the state of Upper Austria. More on this on www.tips.at/n/520412
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