Only those who are not familiar with the national reality will be surprised by the situation of great distress that many thousands of small entrepreneurs and their families are going through. The epidemic outbreak that affects the country and the world has brought to light even more, and brutally, the many weaknesses and problems that affect the Portuguese business fabric.
In these months, a large number of these entrepreneurs were left without any type of income due to the suspension of their activities, closure or delimitation of the spaces where they carried them out, or due to the disappearance or significant drop in demand and customers.
The government put forward some measures to support micro, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, but they are clearly insufficient. Even more serious is the fact that many of these entrepreneurs were excluded from any support. Either because they had unresolved issues or situations to settle with the Social Security, Tax Authorities or banks, or the situation of thousands of partner-managers who did not fulfil the criteria defined by the government, or excluded from the ADAPTAR programme for companies under the simplified accounting regime.
The main instrument created by the government to support companies was the so-called simplified lay-off regime. But this regime is mainly designed to serve large companies with hundreds of millions of euros and not small ones.
It is essential and urgent to respond to the serious situation of micro and small companies, of individual entrepreneurs or self-employed workers, from civil construction to cleaning, from local businesses to market vendors, from restaurants to small car repair shops, among so many others that we cannot list here.
For the PCP, responses are required in order to lift all restrictions on access to already decided support, the establishment of financial support to the managing partners of micro and small companies equating them to the regime of self-employed, the attribution of monthly support to the treasury of these companies, the guarantee of loans at zero interest rate, with a two-year grace period and ten years for repayment of the amounts owed, the reduction of the price of electricity and fuel, among other measures.
Responding now and without delay to their problems is responding to a significant part of the business fabric that will be fundamental for the economic recovery that the country needs.
During this month of June, throughout the country, the PCP will associate its intervention in the Assembly of the Republic with a national action of contact with micro, small and medium-size entrepreneurs to present its proposals, to better understand the reality and to listen and speak with those on the ground and feel the difficulties. We would like to say to these entrepreneurs that they can count on the Portuguese Communist Party.
