Romania: EUR 190m EIB support for companies most impacted by COVID-19
The initiative represents a dedicated COVID-19 economic resilience support package in Romania provided by the European Investment Bank. Ensuring access to financing is crucial to protect employment, unlock business investments and to enable economic growth. The EIB’s response will be provided by leading Romanian financial institutions CEC Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo Bank Romania, Unicredit and BRD Sogelease and enable working capital, leasing finance and capital investment by SME’s and mid-cap companies across the country.
Romanian companies will be able to benefit from the new financing in both Romanian leu and Euro. The EUR 190 million programme is available immediately and companies can apply through branches of the partner institutions across the country.
The new COVID-19 economic resilience financing programme will help companies most impacted by business uncertainty and challenges linked to the pandemic.
Companies involved in manufacturing, commerce, agriculture, tourism and transport will benefit from a range of financial products provided by the four Romanian partner institutions CEC Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo Bank Romania, Unicredit and BRD Sogelease.
The overall impact of the schemes will be strengthened by the diverse client base and different financing provided by the partners.
The government approved the staggering of outstanding debts since the start of the state of emergency and extended the deadlines for executions and accessories
On Thursday, 22nd of October 2020, the government approved the application of the simplified alternative procedure for granting payment rescheduling for a maximum of 12 months, for the main and ancillary budgetary obligations whose payment deadline has expired after the date on which the state of emergency was triggered and until date of issuance of the fiscal attestation certificate.
At the same time, the Executive decided to extend the period in which no interest and penalties are charged for unpaid tax obligations, whose maturity was met after the state of emergency, until December 25.
Until December 25, 2020, the tax authorities will not start enforcement, giving debtors the opportunity to decide on access to the tax facilities offered according to their tax situation.
Beneficiaries of the simplified staggering facility are all taxpayers, regardless of the form of ownership, including those who have an ongoing payment facility under the Fiscal Procedure Code and who do not have outstanding tax obligations at the date of the declaration of emergency, or have been paid until the issuance of the fiscal certificate.
29,250 applicants have registered for access to non-reimbursable funds under the first measure of grants amounting to 1 billion euros
The counties from which the most requests came from micro-enterprises, authorized individuals, non-governmental organizations and medical offices affected by the pandemic were Bucharest (5,546), Cluj (2,917), Brasov (1,259), Timis (1,222), Iasi (1,121). The following were the counties of Ilfov, Bihor, Prahova, Mureş, Constanţa.
Most of the registered requests were from economic operators with zero employees (24,483).
Authorized individuals and non-governmental organizations submitted 10,224 applications. A number of 662 requests were received from PFA / CMI who carried out COVID activities.
In the context of the EU’s trade policy review process, the European Commission has launched on 13 October 2020 Access2Markets (A2M), the EU’s trade portal, which incorporates the Trade HelpDesk and the Market Access Database (MADB).
The portal is designed to support the European business environment, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, so as to make the most of the benefits of EU trade agreements. It provides appropriate information for exported products, including applicable customs duties, rules of origin and other requirements to be met in third markets. It also addresses both new and experienced users and provides practical information on EU trade agreements, step-by-step guides, video examples of successful SMEs trading globally, in all official EU languages. The portal also includes a key innovation to help companies understand and enforce rules of origin: the origin rule self-assessment tool, ROSA, which filters and explains the rules and provides an adapted checklist.