The Regional Ministry of Employment, Training and Self-Employment has managed in 2021 a total of 37,792 aids to companies, self-employed and workers that have meant an injection of 54,210,420 euros in incentives, “an important contribution to economic growth and the maintenance of employment in the province”, as highlighted by the delegate of the Andalusian Government in Almeria, Maribel Sánchez Torregrosa.
Together with the territorial delegate for Employment, Emilio Ortiz López, and the territorial delegate for Tourism, Vicente García Egea, the provincial delegate explained that most of these measures “are the result of the two agreements for economic and social reactivation within the framework of dialogue with the main socio-economic agents in Andalusia”.
These mechanisms have proved “effective in providing an agile response to the urgent need for liquidity for companies, the self-employed and workers generated by the pandemic situation”, according to the delegate, who highlighted “the agility with which the aid has been processed, resolved and paid, in an average period of less than three months, which had never been achieved before”.
For her part, Ortiz gave an account of the management carried out to resolve the lines of aid to maintain employment for companies in ERTE, the social and employment aid for workers in ERTE situations and the state aid for the solvency of companies and the self-employed, “which are not the only ones managed by the Regional Ministry of Employment, but are the most important due to their volume and impact”.
He also highlighted the new way of processing aid “with robotised management systems”, which “has been a milestone and a turning point for the Andalusian administration in terms of agility and simplification, which translates into greater efficiency and greater public confidence”.
He also recalled that also in 2020 the ministries of Employment and Economic Transformation launched urgent support lines to provide liquidity to companies and the self-employed, with more than 14,600 beneficiaries in the case of Employment and 9.75 million in aid, and 7.02 million approved by Economic Transformation for 2,823 companies. Resolution periods were shortened to less than three months.
“A self-employed person with a closed business, a company with collapsed sales at the worst moment of the pandemic or an employee in an ERTE needed effective and urgent support from the administration, the aid is of no use if it arrives months late, when the companies have had to close”, Ortiz pointed out.
According to Ortiz, the time saved in the procedures has also allowed the technicians of the Regional Ministry of Employment “to focus on providing creative solutions to continue improving these processes, respond to the doubts of the applicants and carry out actions of greater added value”.
In this sense, he thanked “the great work done by the public employees of the Regional Ministry of Employment to make possible the resolution, in record time, of these 37,800 grants with 54 million that have been received by companies, self-employed and workers in our province”.
ALMOST 4,000 AIDS
According to the delegate, the automated procedures began to be used to process the thousands of ERTE applications after the first state of alarm and have been extended to the management of other measures, such as aid to maintain employment in companies affected by ERTE, “which has been very well received in its two calls, with 3,971 grants approved in excess of 17.2 million euros for Almería, which have allowed some 12,000 jobs generated by 2,300 self-employed and 1,670 companies, 80 percent of them with fewer than five workers, to be maintained”.
The Employment Delegate also referred to the 210 euro aid for workers in ERTE and discontinuous permanent employment, “innovative in its nature as direct socio-labour aid to compensate for the loss of income of workers in this situation, and because it is granted ex officio by the Regional Ministry of Employment, without the need for an application”. This aid totalled 6,524,000 euros and reached 31,067 people in Almería.
With this, he recalled that the Regional Ministry of Employment has also been responsible for the management of state aid for the solvency of companies and the self-employed, coordinating a technical office composed of 105 people, in which staff from 5 other departments have also worked, “and which has achieved the challenge of processing these complex subsidies in just over 5 months, which in Almeria represent an outlay of 30,482,000 euros for 2,754 companies and the self-employed, with an average of 11,000 euros of subsidy per beneficiary”, he reported.
The economic activities in the province that have benefited most from these subsidies are, in this order, bars (335 resolutions), taxi drivers (318 grants), hairdressing and beauty salons (with 163 grants), restaurants (with 160), small textile businesses (159 resolutions) and road haulage (98 applications resolved), followed by agriculture and livestock businesses (105), street market vendors (95), hotels and tourist accommodation (42), travel agencies (41) and mechanical workshops (39 grants).
Ortiz explained that the Regional Ministry of Employment “has simplified the bureaucratic burden on applicants as much as possible by exempting them from presenting documentation accrediting compliance with the more than 40 requirements demanded in the complex state regulations, which has been the main obstacle for the 1,109 million allocated to Andalusia to reach our productive fabric”.
He also assured that “the automation of processes and the good organisation of the Technical Office would have allowed us to use up the budget if sufficient applications had been submitted to meet these demanding requirements”.
TOURISM COMPANIES
For his part, the territorial delegate of Tourism has highlighted that Almeria has received more than 9.5 million euros in aid for solvency, which have been distributed among nearly 300 entrepreneurs and self-employed in the tourism sector.
“The Andalusian Government and the Regional Ministry of Juan Marín are committed to the tourism industry, as it plays an essential role in terms of job creation and source of wealth in our community and, to a large extent, it is to whom we owe the economic recovery that we are experiencing after this latest health and economic crisis”.
García Egea considered that “despite the fact that the good results of recent months point to a recovery, it is necessary that the administrations continue to support the professionals who have been particularly affected by the crisis caused by the coronavirus, which in the tourism sector are mainly focused on hotels, restaurants and travel agencies”.