The great fear of SMEs: they will lose 1,100 million a week if there is a new confinement

The Spanish Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises (Cepyme) and Ceprede warn that new confinement would make SMEs lose 1,100 million euros every week. In addition, 300,000 jobs would be affected, according to a study collected by Europa Press.

Confinement similar to that of April, both organizations explain in this study, would cause a containment of the levels of invoicing (of all companies, not only SMEs) of 14% and an impact on total employment of 9.4%. In total, the losses would be 1.8 billion euros per week, while the number of jobs affected would go up to 480.000.

Of these 1.8 billion losses, about half would be assumed by construction, hospitality, trade (wholesale and retail), real estate, automotive, and land transport activities.

Thus, 60% of the losses would be assumed by SMEs: 22% by small companies, 22% by micro SMEs, and 18% by medium-sized companies. In the case of the jobs affected, the percentage ‘assumed’ by SMEs would be 63% of the total.

Although some sectors would not be greatly impacted or even experience a positive impact, there would be others with reductions of more than 1%, which could exceed 15% in the case of travel agencies, tour operators or air transport. convict.

The president of Cepyme, Gerardo Cuerva, has made clear in statements collected by Europa Press during the presentation of the study that SMEs need help, because “they are at the limit”. “Every day that passes, the company is more damaged, more damaged”, stressed Cuerva.

Regarding the data collected in the report, the president of the employer’s association thinks that they are “magnitudes that cannot be endured” and that, although he understands that the “most serious” problem at this time is the loss of human lives , considers that when measures are taken to restrict activity, either due to the mobility of people or due to the closure of activity, they must be accompanied by extraordinary measures so that SMEs can overcome this situation.

According to Cuerva, the smaller companies have been able to resist until now because “they have thrown away everything they had.” “We should focus all our efforts on saving jobs and saving the company,” he had an impact.

From his point of view, the most important thing at the moment is to inject money into the companies and thus bet on maintaining the productive fabric. Along these lines, he recalled that, according to data from the Bank of Spain, the percentage of insolvent companies is between 14% and 19% and he foresees that up to 10% of the companies will be unviable.

Thus, Cuerva has insisted that it is urgent to approve direct aid and in order for these aid to “be effective, but also efficient”, he sees the need for the measures to be specifically targeted at the companies that need it, “avoiding generalizations” .