Digitizing small businesses is "
an absolutely major stake
".
The Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, recalled this Monday evening on the set of BFMTV.
“
Today you have one in three businesses that is digitized (…).
We have to speed up.
Can traders get by on their own to build their own websites?
No,
”noted the minister.
The latter has therefore announced the payment of
direct aid of 500 euros
to support traders who wish to create their own website.
This assistance will be paid at the beginning of January 2021.
Read also: The prospect of reopening small shops at the end of the week seems to be receding
Bruno Le Maire also encouraged municipalities to support retailers in this digitalization process.
“
One of the good solutions is to go through the municipalities.
We make a platform on which we list all the businesses that are in the city.
To help all cities to accelerate this digitization, we have listed all the solutions on 'clique-mon-commerce.gouv.fr', both for the municipalities and for the traders themselves
”, detailed the Minister.
Stock assistance
The Minister of the Economy also said he was ready to consider the payment of
additional aid to
traders
to
deal with the headache of unsold stocks
due to administrative closures.
“If more help is needed on the issue of stocks, we are ready to look at it and grant it,”
said Bruno Le Maire.
“Indeed, many traders will find themselves with winter collections on their hands they will not know what to do because they will not have been able to sell it in the period,”
he conceded.
The minister also
urged landlords to waive their November rents
for businesses.
"
I ask the big real estate companies to give it up and I say to the small landlords' is not it better to give up a rent in November that you may never receive?"
»
,
Launched the Minister of the Economy
.
Open on Sunday
At the same time, the minister called for seeing how to
“strengthen health safety rules”
during confinement in order to allow the reopening of businesses considered non-essential.
In particular, he declared himself
"very favorable"
to the establishment of a system for making appointments in stores in order to limit the movement of people.
"This is one of the health rules that would allow us to reopen in good conditions,"
he said.
Bruno Le Maire also mentioned the possibility of
allowing stores to open on Sundays
and the extension of opening hours to allow traders to make up for the shortfall caused by this new confinement.
Possibility to "
move the sales
"
Asked about the government's position towards the end-November sales, “
Black Friday
” from the United States, Bruno Le Maire recalled that it was
“a private promotional operation”
on which the executive had no hand.
“I invite distributors and traders to discuss with each other to find out what solutions they want to bring to Black Friday: should it be postponed? Should it be spread out? It's up to them to decide, ”
he said.
"The responsibility of the State is the sales,"
he said, referring to the possibility of
"moving the date of the sales"
if the traders so wished.