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The tourism industry must benefit from emergency compensation and any closure of the activity in HoReCA makes it even harder to restart and throws even more employees into unemployment and operators in bankruptcy, the president of the Romanian Hotels and Restaurants' Employers Association (HORA) Daniel Mischie told a press conference on Wednesday, according to AGERPRES.
"We believe that the industry must benefit from emergency compensation, otherwise we will no longer exist. This industry of tourism - hotels, restaurants, travel agencies, guides - all operators in this industry ensure the beautiful part of this country. The government, today, is finishing off this beautiful part of the country. We believe that the HoReCa must be detached from the 3% principle and that the HoReCa can operate at 30% capacity, regardless of the percentage of people infected with COVID. Any cap, any closure of the activity in HoReCa, practically makes the restart even harder and throws even more operators and more employees in bankruptcy, respectively in unemployment or in the situation of leaving this country," said Mischie.
He underlined that this is the moment when HoReCa needs help, compensation for the damages brought to it by the Romanian Government, the moment when it can benefit from the principle of zero taxes for the minimum wage.
"It is 323 days since HoReCa is restricted from operating. (...) What happened among employees: of the 200,000 employees directly hired in this industry, respectively another 200,000 who work for this industry, horizontally, we estimate that between 70,000 and 100,000 employees have chosen to leave this industry and switch to other industries, even to leave this country.What happens from the point of view of entrepreneurs? Of the 40,000 units operating in the country, almost 15,000 will never open again. This means that 13,000 entrepreneurs will have virtually no business with employees in this country and deliver no taxes to this country," Mischie explained.
He stressed that, in this sense, there is talk of aid for the tourism industry, which is in fact "a compensation" for the fact that it is restricted, but the materialisations "are completely lacking".
The president of HORA also said that discussions are being held with the local authorities, in the context in which the tourism units pay taxes to the local budget even if their activity is restricted.
