Intervention Categories: Finance policy and financial aid; Stimulus packages and financial support
Level of Jurisdiction: National
Overview: The German Government continues to grant export credit guarantees (so-called Hermes Cover) for exports to COVID-19 risk areas.
The package of measures is a comprehensive aid program and is intended to help protect employees and companies from the negative economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It comprises a number of financing and insurance instruments, including the Federal Export Credit Guarantees.
Federal Export Credit Guarantees continue to be available to cover export transactions and financing, insuring exporters and banks against economically and politically induced bad debt losses on the basis of a comprehensive budgetary authorisation.
In the event that there is an additional need for export cover, the Federal Government can extend this authorisation quickly. This means that sufficient funds are also available in the area of Federal export credit guarantees to provide effective protection for exporters and banks.
Additionally, export transactions on short payment terms (up to 24 months) can now also be covered by official export credit guarantees of the Federal Government within the EU and in certain OECD countries. In particular, this enables possible bottlenecks in the private export credit insurance market to be absorbed. Besides the EU, the beneficiary countries are Australia, Canada, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, the USA and the United Kingdom.
The extended cover facilities are initially limited until 31 December 2020. This is made possible by a decision of the European Commission on 23 March 2020 to amend the provisions of the so-called Short Term Communication. This temporarily removes the list of marketable risks, i.e. the countries for which cover by official export credit guarantees is not normally permitted.
Full details here: https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/DE/Dossier/coronavirus.html