Governments across Europe are putting together bailouts for industries and workers harmed by the coronavirus’s economic shutdown.
Germany’s government announced a plan to help suffering businesses and will make investments totaling €12.4 billion. The plan will make cash available to strapped businesses and pay workers for a short while in some jobs.
The Bank of England cut its benchmark interest rate from 0.75 percent to 0.25 percent as part of the country’s rescue plan, its first cut since 2016. The bank also has underwritten an initiative enabling lenders to make up to £300 billion in new loans to businesses.
The cut is part of a joint plan with the British treasury department, which has earmarked as much as £30 billion in business relief. The bank and Boris Johnson administration will steer the economy “in concert” using “timely and powerful” measures, said Mark Carney, the bank’s governor.
Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte said his government will “use all human and economic resources” to contain the virus and keep the economy alive.
Italy, at the center of Europe’s virus plague, has made investors so nervous that interest rates on the country’s 10-year bonds moved two points higher than those of Germany, the greatest distance between the two since August 2019.
Bruno Le Maire, France’s finance minister, has called for a “strong, massive, and coordinated response from Europe to avoid the risk of an economic crisis after the epidemic.” He said the virus epidemic could drop France’s growth rate this year from its projected 1.3 percent to less than 1.
