Refundable Advance Payment No. 4: What it provides for beneficiaries

More favorable terms regarding beneficiaries and the amount of aid are provided for in the Joint Decision of the Ministers of Finance and Development and Investment on the «Procedure and conditions for granting aid in the form of a repayable advance No. 4 to businesses that suffered economic damage due to the emergence and spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus disease in September and October 2020.».

The Joint Ministerial Decision was published in the Government Gazette and, as clarified in a statement by the Ministry of Finance, «the fourth cycle of the successful financing scheme provides for even more favorable terms for beneficiaries and the amount of aid, 50% of which is non-repayable, in order to cover the additional support needs of the real economy in the current phase of dealing with the health crisis.».
More specifically:

Right to participate
In addition to the businesses that were eligible to participate in the previous three cycles of the Refundable Advance Payment, the following applies to the 4th cycle:
– All sole proprietorships are now eligible to participate, all sole proprietorships, regardless of whether they employ staff or have a cash register (including freelancers and scientists), provided that they show a 20% reduction in turnover in the reference months (September-October) and have a minimum reference turnover of €300.
– In particular, businesses whose activities have been suspended by government order or are based in areas affected by the Mediterranean cyclone «Ianos» are eligible to participate in Refundable Advance Payment 4 regardless of any drop in turnover, provided they have a minimum reference turnover of €300.
– New businesses that have positive revenues for the first time since February 2020 are now eligible to participate, based on July-August turnover for double-entry bookkeeping and third-quarter turnover for single-entry bookkeeping.

Amount of aid
– Businesses whose activities have been suspended by government order will receive:
(a) sole proprietorships without employees and without a cash register, a fixed amount of €2,000, regardless of the mathematical formula,
(b) for other businesses, the mathematical formula applies, with a minimum threshold of €2,000. In addition, for companies whose activity has been suspended by government order, the minimum threshold applies in proportion to the number of employees (€2,000 with no employees, €4,000 with up to 5 employees, €8,000 with up to 20 employees, €15,000 for up to 50 employees, and €30,000 for more than 50 employees).
– Businesses whose activities have not been suspended by government order will receive:
(a) sole proprietorships without employees and without a cash register: a fixed amount of €1,000, regardless of the mathematical formula;,
(b) for other businesses, the mathematical formula applies, with a minimum threshold of €1,000.
Half (50%) of the aid amount is non-repayable, provided that the company maintains the same level of employment until March 31, 2021.
With regard to the remaining 50% of the aid, an interest-free grace period is granted for the period until December 31, 2021, during which the beneficiary undertaking is not required to repay any part of the principal or interest, while after the grace period has expired, the amount due is repaid in forty equal monthly installments.

Application procedure
– A prerequisite for submitting an application for a refundable advance payment is that the interested company must have previously submitted to the electronic platform «myBusinessSupport» (https://www.aade.gr/mybusinesssupport) the VAT turnover data for companies subject to VAT, or the gross revenue for companies not subject to VAT, for the previous months. For this purpose, companies are requested to submit the relevant data immediately.
– Then, within the next few days, the application platform for the Refundable Advance Payment 4 will open, where the amount of aid to which the business is entitled will be displayed directly, provided that it meets the eligibility criteria.

Please note that the expression of interest form that had to be submitted at an earlier stage, as was the case in the previous three cycles of the Refundable Advance Payment, has been abolished.
The application platform will remain open until November 30, 2020.