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Germany Approves Emergency Borrowing for Historic Virus Bailout

Germany Approves Emergency Borrowing for Historic Virus Bailout

(Bloomberg) -- Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government secured emergency spending, unlocking a historic rescue package designed to cushion the blow of the coronavirus pandemic.

A majority of lawmakers in the Bundestag voted on Wednesday to allow additional borrowing to combat the crisis, according to the legislature’s president. The Bundesrat, or upper house of parliament, will vote on Friday.

The extraordinary authorization is part of a packet of legislation aimed at protecting German jobs and businesses. The new borrowing of 156 billion euros ($169 billion) is equivalent to half of the country’s normal annual spending.

Germany Approves Emergency Borrowing for Historic Virus Bailout

“There is no blueprint for countering such a crisis,” Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said in the Bundestag in Berlin, filling in for Merkel who is at home in precautionary quarantine. “We’re doing that with an enormous amount of money, as precisely as possible.”

The package comes as the economy braces for its biggest slump in decades. Business confidence is collapsing at a record pace amid restrictions to slow the spread of the disease, and the Ifo economic institute predicted mass bankruptcies in what may be a deeper slump than during the financial crisis.

Germany’s ruling coalition of Merkel’s conservative bloc and the Social Democrats cast aside infighting to push for emergency powers, abandoning its long-standing balanced-budget policy in the process.

Backed by broad political support, the government plans to unleash a barrage of debt-financed measures totaling more than 750 billion euros to counter what Merkel called the biggest challenge to Germany since World War II. The package includes loans, guarantees and aid for large and small companies as well as money to buy stakes and even completely nationalize some stricken businesses.

Germany’s Virus Package
  • Supplementary budget financed by 156 billion euros in debt, or about 4.5% of GDP, for higher social spending and a 50 billion-euro liquidity fund for self-employed people
  • 600 billion-euro rescue fund
    • 100 billion euros in loans through state-run development bank KfW (potentially financed with new debt)
    • 100 billion euros earmarked for equity stakes in companies (potentially financed with new debt)
    • 400 billion euros in guarantees
  • Additionally, the state’s KfW bank has 500 billion euros available to boost liquidity of German companies

The country, which tightened lockdown measures this week, has about 32,700 cases and more than 150 deaths, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Germany’s containment measures are affecting the legislative process. Lawmakers were disbursed around parliament to adhere to distancing requirements, and the podium was disinfected after every speaker. Rather than lining up at ballot boxes at the front of the plenary hall in the glass-domed Reichstag, members will cast their votes at several urns arrayed around the building.

Governments around the world are trying to cope with an influx of patients into hospitals and the effects on economies of keeping everyone indoors. Euro-area finance ministers took a small step toward a rescue package for struggling member states on Tuesday as fatalities climbed in Italy and Spain and evidence piled up of the coronavirus’s crippling economic impact.

Aside from the current emergency relief, Germany’s government is evaluating a stimulus program to help revive the economy once the pandemic is contained. The measures, which could involve consumer spending and corporate-tax relief, would be targeted for short-term impact, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

“When at some point we are able to get this pandemic under control and we can see economic light at the end of the tunnel, then there will certainly be growth measures to get the economy going,” Labor Minister Hubertus Heil said on Deutschlandfunk radio. “But the strong and positive message is that we are well prepared for such situations. We are a strong social state. We’re not like in America.”

Still, the clock is ticking. Economists warn that the damage will intensify with each day that consumers and businesses are forced to shut.

“We’re moving into the unknown here really,” Ifo President Clemens Fuest said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “The likelihood is large that it will be worse than 2009, but beyond that we really don’t know. It depends on how the epidemic develops.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.