Given the extension of the quarantine, the Government began to outline what the ATP 5 will be like

Ignacio Ortelli

08/12/2020 - 16:21

• Clarín.com
• Politics

This Friday, President Alberto Fernández will renew the quarantine in the Metropolitan Area and in the areas of the country most affected by the coronavirus for two more weeks. With this decision already made, the Government began to evaluate how the implementation of ATP 5 will be , the Work and Production Assistance program with which the State subsidizes part of the wages of private sector workers.

Although the payment of the fourth edition of the program was launched just this week, the head of state entrusted his collaborators to work on the new stage that should be paid in September. The idea, although it will be molded by the end of next week, is to incorporate incentives for job creation .  

With this premise, the central axis of the economic Cabinet meeting headed by the Chief of Staff, Santiago Cafiero , was how the program will continue with which the Government has already paid the salaries of more than three million employees since the pandemic began.

In the Hall of Scientists the ministers Martín Guzmán (Economy) and Claudio Moroni (Work) converged  ; the president of the Central Bank, Miguel Pesce ; the head of the AFIP, Mercedes Marcó del Pont ; the Deputy Chief of Cabinet, Cecilia Todesca Bocco ; the Secretary of Economic Policy of the Ministry of Economy, Haroldo Montagú ; and the advisor Daniel Schteingart who replaced the Minister of Productive Development, Matías Kulfas . 

At the beginning, the meeting reviewed the preliminary data of ATP 4 - it is in full payment stage - which incorporated the modality of subsidized rate credit.

Officials highlighted that  more than 70 percent of the 274,557 companies that registered on the AFIP page were awarded ATP 4.

It is about 135 thousand companies, which were benefited with the payment of the complementary salary for 1,400,000 million workers and another 65 thousand that received credits at subsidized rates to assist the salary of 400,000 employees.

According to official data, it was a disbursement of 27,000 and 7,000 million pesos, respectively, which represents a decrease in spending compared to the previous rounds, if credits are not taken into account.

This decrease is directly explained in the level of opening of activities. In the first round, when phase 1 of the strict quarantine was in force, the program involved a disbursement of $ 49.9 billion; in the second it was $ 40.9 billion and, in the third, it dropped to $ 30.6 billion.

For what will be ATP 5, the Government plans to maintain the criteria for billing . In other words, the State would continue to pay part of the salaries of companies with a nominal drop in annual turnover regardless of the area in which the company is located. "You can no longer speak of ASPO (social isolation) or DISPO (distancing) areas because the virus has spread too much," they admit in the Government.

And, at the same time, soft loans would be maintained for those private companies, with up to 800 employees, whose variation was zero or with an improvement in billing. In the fourth round, the cap was up to 30 percent per year , allowing more companies to access the benefit without an impact on spending.

In any case, it is still not clear how much the maximum limit of the subsidy will amount (in the fourth stage it was 1.5 minimum, vital and mobile salary) or of the scales and loan rates. "We are going to finish defining it next week," clarified senior Cabinet sources.

But Marcó del Pont, at the end of the meeting at Casa Rosada, announced that it will be "based on the evolution of the pandemic" and taking into account that there is "great heterogeneity in the behavior of the industry."

“There are very positive data. There is a clear slowdown in the fall in industrial and commercial activity. How does this continue? It is necessary to see the complementary salaries of more complicated sectors, with sectoral and regional heterogeneity, "said the head of the AFIP, who confided that it is likely that" the parameters will not be modified "since" the level of turnover is the best indicator ”.

On the other hand, the official announced that it is "evaluating" the incorporation of a line of "zero-rate credits that is articulated with job creation, which passes to a subsidy stage." 

"It is an idea because we believe that we are in a process of inflection and recovery, which has to be accompanied by an improvement in the demand for employment and we believe that the State's policies have to help stimulate this demand for employment," he completed.