March the 9th, 2021 - Croatian coronavirus state aid, introduced as part of an economic/job preservation package by the government, has helped many keep their heads about water during these unprecedent times. Many enterprises have now returned that money.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Brnic writes, Solin-based automotive component maker Ad Plastik is the first Croatian enterprise to publicly announce this year that it is returning its Croatian coronavirus state aid which was received last year, at a time when it was forced to suspend production due to the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent lockdown.
In an interview with Jutarnji list, the President of the Management Board, Marinko Dosen, announced that he intends to return the 12.3 million kuna in Croatian coronavirus state aid that was used to secure the payment of employee salaries last year, with an explanation that last year ended with a slightly better result than initially expected.
However, it should be noted that in a week´s time, Ad Plastik is holding a general meeting of its shareholders at which one of the points will be the payment of dividends, in which the reason for the return of Croatian coronavirus state aid should also be sought.
Namely, one of the conditions for using the aforementioned economic measure is the obligation that the company will not pay out from its operating profit.
This condition was mentioned a few months after the virus first arrived in Croatia and was a reason as to why many companies quickly changed their minds and decided to return Croatian coronavirus state aid back to the government. Although, as it now seems, the main trigger for the return of the aid was nevertheless the fact that the list of all aid recipients would be made public.
According to the data we received from the Croatian Employment Service (CES), so far, 20,850 Croatian enterprises/employers have returned their Croatian coronavirus state aid, and the total amount that sat on that account after its return now stands at almost 206 million kuna. Since the beginning of the implementation of this measure, a total of 9.395 billion kuna has been paid out to companies to help them preserve jobs, of which 432 million kuna was for contributions to those in the second pension pillar.
Croatian coronavirus state aid was paid out to over 111 thousand employers and almost 684 thousand of their employees. The most common reasons for the refund of these benefits, as they have stated from the CES, was the withdrawal of support from their employer, and improperly paid support for sick workers at the expense of the HZZO in the month for which support was received, failure to meet income criteria or other criteria, the non-payment of wages to workers, wrong payments due to multiple requests and so on.
"Consequently, we would not list the payment of profits as the predominant reason for the decision to return the support by the employer," they pointed out from the CES.
The institution in charge of implementing Croatian coronavirus state aid for job preservation also says that they note that "voluntary returns mainly took place in the period from June to August 2020, while significant voluntary returns have not been noticed recently."
Among the first to return the aid in Croatia, but also on a wider, international level, was the popular Swedish furniture chain Ikea.
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