While the closures imposed by the health situation continue, Bercy must announce on Thursday new aid to companies in difficulty.

The goal is to avoid a cascade of cafes, hotels and restaurants bankruptcies.

Nicolas Barré takes stock of a current economic issue.

How to avoid a cascade of cafes, hotels, restaurants bankruptcies?

While the closures imposed by the health situation continue, the government is preparing new aid measures.

By increasing the aid that the Solidarity Fund can provide for businesses, which also targets the self-employed and other sectors such as tourism, events or sport.

Thousands of companies have called on this fund since the start of the crisis.

And that will continue in a new version of the device, the fourth since its creation last spring.

Today, to put it simply, the aid is either flat-rate with aid of 10,000 euros, or proportional to the turnover lost with a ceiling of 800,000 euros since the start of the crisis.

And today, that is not enough?

No, the ceiling will be raised and can reach up to three million euros, the government must confirm this Thursday.

These aids will no longer be based on lost turnover but will cover the company's fixed costs, in this case up to 70% of these costs.

The aim is to save businesses that were above the ceiling, for example groups of several restaurants that can no longer afford to keep up.

It is moreover not excluded that this ceiling of three million euros of state aid is itself raised by Brussels in order to avoid a wave of failures.

When this Solidarity Fund was set up last year, no one could predict the duration of the crisis.

Nor even if there would be a 2nd or a 3rd wave of the pandemic.

But here we are.

And the crisis is still hitting the same sectors.

Exactly!

The boss of a large bank confided his concern to see that the effects of the crisis are still concentrated on the same economic sectors.

They resisted the two waves of the virus but they are now bloodless, with exhausted bosses and dramatic family situations.

While in contrast, other sectors are holding up and even see a sharp rebound in their activity for the second half of the year, and that's good.

The economic landscape for the coming months will therefore be extremely contrasted.

The gaps will widen between the most solid companies which will emerge even stronger from the crisis, and the others, which were fragile before and which will not survive.

2021 is going to be the year of the worst for some and the strongest rebound for others.

Hence the new government aid to cushion the shock of the coming months.