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The public guarantee plan approved by the Government last week and whose details will be analyzed today in the Council of Ministers will leave out the refinancing of companies affected by the coronavirus crisis and will focus solely on new credit or renewals.

This was one of the agreements reached yesterday between banks and the ministry after days of negotiations on how the public support program should be channeled. This figure is key for banks to turn on credit to troubled companies and avoid a wave of bankruptcies in the coming weeks.

Banks have insistently demanded for days that public guarantees reach 90% for small companies and will drop for large ones, alleging that many companies could not repay the loans and their balance sheet would be severely burdened.

However, the Calviño team considered these figures to be excessive because it would free entities from risks and could lead to misuse of credit. In the late afternoon, different sources consulted placed coverage at around 75% for small companies in the best scenario for banks. This guarantee could be reduced to 50% in the case of large companies with less probability of default.

At the Official Credit Institute (ICO), the body that will process the granting of these guarantees to the banks, they have asked the Government for caution to avoid a drastic impact on their accounts. The last time this entity granted 100% guaranteed loans by the State was in 2008 and it ended up being a real failure with a million dollar cost for the public coffers. 83% of those loans resulted in defaults.

What did seem to be an agreement between the parties was to leave the refinancing out of the program. In this way, the ministry wants to avoid that those credits that are already in danger are spun by the guarantee system and end up becoming a problem for the public treasury for reasons other than the coronavirus crisis. They also want to prevent banks from covering their current loan portfolio instead of granting new financing. In this way, the package is limited to new credits and novations of existing ones.

Economy plans to clarify all these requests this Tuesday. The validity period - which could be 6 months, as in the case of the export lines approved for Cesce - remains to be known, and if the plan is structured in a phased manner through different sections.

Taxes are not touched

As far as taxes are concerned, the Ministry of Finance indicates that the Government does not contemplate, at the moment, additional moratoriums or delay the deadlines for declarations and settlements.

In recent days, requests have been made in this regard: prosecutors, accounting experts or even Foment del Treball have been transferred to the department led by María Jesús Montero or to the Prime Minister himself. "In this situation, temporarily and exceptionally, the measure should be adopted to postpone for three months the presentation (or at least the entry) of tax declarations and self-assessments," asked Josep Sánchez Llibre to Pedro Sánchez by letter.

Likewise, the Spanish Association of Fiscal Advisors (AEDAF) published last Sunday an extensive list of "tax measures to cushion the impact of the coronavirus", and among them included "the delay at least until June of tax debts derived from taxes to be self-assessed, such as Corporation Tax, VAT, or withholdings for personal income tax. " However, the Tax Agency will maintain the usual deadlines both for companies and also for citizens, who from next April 1 must begin to file their tax returns.

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