The government is launching a new €200 company payment after it barely reached 600,000 people for an income of less than €14,000
One of the spearheads of the anti-crisis plan approved by the Council of Ministers on Tuesday is the new check of 200 euros with which the government wants to help families with an income of less than 27,000 euros a year and with assets that do not exceed 75,000 euros. Taking into account that retirees and minimum vital income beneficiaries are excluded from the plan, the executive calculates that the aid will reach about 6 million people, about 4.2 million families.
A figure that, judging by experience with similar aid, may remain an estimate when compared to the actual number of citizens affected by the measure. Without going any further, the previous one-off payment of €200 approved in June, which could be requested until September 30, was a significant setback compared to initial projections.
In concrete terms, the Ministry of Finance calculated that this aid – intended for low-income earners with an income of less than 14,000 euros – would amount to 2.7 million. Well, in the end it’s barely 600,000, according to ministry data.
The huge bureaucratic burden of applying for the aid is at the root of this failure in the delivery of the aid that the government will try to avoid with the new check approved this Tuesday. But the precedents are not optimistic. This was also apparent from the rent support of 250 euros announced in October 2021, which will take effect in the new year. At best, the communities started in the summer.
The youth culture check – provided with a direct support of 400 euros – has also taken almost a year to work effectively since it was announced in October 2021. Without forgetting the minimum living income. According to data from the Ministry of Social Security at the end of November, more than 535,000 households housing nearly 1.5 million beneficiaries received this assistance. Moncloa’s initial estimate in May 2020 was that the benefit would reach 850,000 beneficiary households, in which more than 2.3 million people live.
This forecasting fiasco has forced the Ministry led by José Luis Escrivá to take decisions such as the launch last October of an information box to publicize the measure to potential beneficiaries who have not had access to it. In its first six weeks of travel, it served 1,751 people, 70% of which were women. Of the total, 46% had not asked for it before because they were unaware of its existence or believed it did not meet requirements, and because they perceived it to be a very complex process.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
