The corona pandemic hits the economy and the health system in Germany with force: the state is loosing up massive amounts of money to cushion the consequences. The Ministry of Finance is now calculating how much is necessary for this. However, the actual bill is likely to be lower in the end.
The corona pandemic is continuing, and so far there is no end in sight. The ailing economy is kept going with huge injections of money from the state. But how expensive is it all for Germany? The Federal Government expects that overcoming the Corona crisis will burden the public coffers with 1.446 trillion euros this year and next. That emerges from the answer of the Ministry of Finance to a written question from the left parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch, which is available to the editorial network Germany.
The 1.446 trillion euros include costs for the health system and the procurement of medical material, the support and economic stimulus programs for the economy, international aid payments, declining income and higher social security expenses as well as government guarantees in the form of sureties, quick loans and the participation of the Federal on the European reconstruction program.
This is what the bill looks like
In the current year, the Ministry of Finance expects crisis costs of EUR 400.4 billion for the federal government alone. The budgets of the federal states and municipalities will be burdened with an additional 89 billion euros. The Ministry of Finance forecasts the additional expenditure and loss of income at the social security funds at 26.5 billion euros. For the coming year, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz from the SPD is planning additional burdens for the federal budget of 74 billion euros. According to the forecast, the budgets of federal states and municipalities will be burdened with 27.3 billion euros in the coming year due to the crisis, and social security funds with 2.8 billion.
All in all, the budget-effective corona measures are therefore 619.9 billion euros. Added to this are the state guarantees, which the Ministry of Finance specifies as 756.5 billion euros for the federal government and 69.8 billion euros for the states. In addition, a crisis calculation comes out of 1.446 trillion euros.
When calculating the crisis costs, it must be taken into account that parts of the guarantees and loans will be repaid at a later point in time and that not all federal aid programs may be used in full. The total bill could therefore still decrease. But it could also increase if another shutdown were necessary due to the dynamic development of the number of infections.
Bartsch: Ask rich people to pay
"It is perfectly right not to save into the crisis, but wrong not to care at all who will bear the costs," said left parliamentary group leader Bartsch to the RND. "Who pays the 1.4 trillion euro corona bill? That is a central political question in the coming months," the left-wing politician continued.
"The financing of the corona costs is a historical task, for which there must be compensation, as provided by the Basic Law," demanded Bartsch. The one hundred billionaires in Germany alone now have a hundred billion euros more than they did a year ago, said the parliamentarian. Bartsch demanded: "Billionaires and multimillionaires must be used to finance this crisis, otherwise the cutbacks in the welfare state and infrastructure threaten."
.