The number of beneficiaries of Poland’s €47 billion anti-crisis shield has exceeded 500,000 and the majority of them are small businesses which don’t have to pay social security contributions and the self-employed affected by the crisis, announced Paweł Borys, the CEO of the Polish Development Fund.
He added that companies have covered 200,000 workplaces with financing to help support a reduction in work time for employees. Without the shield, he said these workers would have already been unemployed.
Borys explained that it is hard to declare whether the number of people applying for support exceeds the government’s assumed scale of applications but assured that Poland has secured necessary funds to keep financing the shield.
He stated that due to reforming the tax system and Poland’s lower public debt profile, the country entered the crisis with strong fundamentals, including a historically low unemployment rate, a balanced central budget, and one of the strongest banking systems in the world.
Borys underlined that new elements are constantly being introduced to the anti-crisis shield and it foresees €22 billion for protecting workplaces. For a company to be eligible, it needs to have been active at the end 2019, paid taxes in Poland and lost 25 percent of its income. Funds will be made accessible in April.
