POMIDA: RENT REDUCTION OF CLOSED BUSINESSES: FOUR NECESSARY ADJUSTMENTS & IMMEDIATE PAYMENT OF COMPENSATIONS!

To the Prime Minister Mr. Kyriakos Mitsotakis

The Minister of Finance Mr. Christos Staikouras

The Minister of Development Mr. Adonis Georgiadis

The Deputy Minister of Finance Mr. Theodoros Skylakakis

The Deputy Minister of Finance Mr. Apostolos Vesyropoulos

th December 2020

TOPIC: Closed Business Rent Reduction: Four Necessary Arrangements & immediate payment of compensation

Dear President, Ministers, Governors

It was with surprise and mixed feelings that we heard your announcement in the Parliament for a two-month extension of the forced reduction of business rents by 80%, with state compensation of 60%, which as we were assured competently will be on the full rent and not on its reduction, with the aim of avoiding mass “lockouts” in the market.

The positive side of the new regulation for owners who are aware of the issues is the tax-free and unconfiscated 60% of the state compensation, in view of the reduced real possibility of collecting 60% of these months’ rents from the tenants with the closed shops.

But the negative side Mr. President for the property owners, who suffer an immediate loss of income and will have to wait if and when the tenant will pay his share and when the process of paying the state refund will be initiated , is the extent of application of the regulation and the manner and time of its implementation. Specifically:

• It is whether it will be limited to the core of businesses for which it is in fact unavoidable, i.e. those really closed by state order, with shutters down and without a “back door”, or it will “overflow” with the inclusion of operating businesses, rental housing, student housing, etc…
• It is if and when the 20% will be paid by the tenants, if there is no again relevant regulation and in fact at the moment when the owners – with the restrictions on the operation of the Courts – cannot have any judicial protection, even when the debts of their tenants go back to a time before the relevant measures were taken and the closing of the stores
• It is the multi-month delay in the declaration, settlement, disbursement and payment of the 60%, which includes the risk of rejection of COVID declarations due to false declarations by tenants, at a time when the settlement of the returns of a large number of owners for several past months, in contrast to the direct payments of aid to all other sectors of the economy and society.
• It is the destruction of the lessor-legal entities of all kinds, which include hundreds of institutions and unions not of a profit-making nature, with intense social and philanthropic activity and their only income is the rents they receive, which while they will now suffer an even more bloody reduction in rents, are wrongly constantly excluded from any facilitation in this matter.
• It is that it does not combine with measures of immediate relief from the other tax and any loan obligations and arrangements of the lessors to which it is obvious that they cannot meet. 

WHY WE ASK THIS:

1. The measure should be strictly limited to two-month rents of closed businesses only. 

That all favorable suspensions and arrangements of obligations also apply to lessors.

2. All legal entities-lessors of real estate of any kind should be entitled to a refund.

Finally, the process of clearing November compensations and then paying them to the bank accounts of the lessors, must be carried out automatically, with the submission and immediate electronic verification of each valid COVID declaration and not after the deadline. -align: justify; “> President General Secretary