Tourism, leisure and culture companies receive an injection of 14.45 billion euros under ICO COVID-19 line of guarantees

According to the information provided by the Official Credit Institute (Spanish acronym: ICO), in its fortnightly monitoring report, with figures updated at 31 July 2020, 111,080 companies in the tourism, leisure and culture sector have received 14.45 billion euros in financing thanks to the State line of guarantees that the government approved on 17 March to help them tackle the socio-economic impact of COVID-19, facilitating their access to credit and liquidity.

The State Secretary for Tourism, Fernando Valdés, underlined that "despite the very tough period the sector is going through, these figures confirm that the government is making instruments available to tourism companies that are proving to be effective in minimising the impact of the pandemic; tourism companies have an exclusive sub-tranche of 2.5 billion euros available contained in the Plan to Boost the Tourism Sector approved a few weeks ago, which clearly demonstrates the importance the government assigns to the sector".

With figures updated at 31 July 2020, operations under the sub-tranche and specific related activities for SMEs and independent contracts, approved on 16 June by the Council of Ministers, number 7,637 in total, with total financing of 354.6 million euros. Hotels, accommodation, campsites, restaurants and companies engaged in leisure and entertainment are among the beneficiaries of these credits, which seek to continue maintaining their activity and the jobs these generate.

The Tourism and Leisure Sector heads up the number of operations applied for from the ICO (144,380), followed by Construction and Infrastructure (79,816); Business, Professional and Administrative Services (68,132); Consumer and Retail Goods (66,452); Capital and Industrial Goods (49,906) and the Commercial Distribution of Food and Drinks (48,879).