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On Thursday, the Finnish government announced new restrictions to tackle the coronavirus crisis. Mikael Pentikäinen, President and CEO of Suomen Yrittäjät, says, “Many businesses are close to breaking point. When businesses are forced to shut, the business owners should be compensated quickly.”

The application period for the second round of business cost support ends on Friday 26.2. In mid-April, an improved business cost support III will be available for application, which is also more clearly intended for solo entrepreneurs.

Local businesses: the lifeblood of the municipality

Even though the COVID-19 pandemic has decreased the sales and profitability of companies as expected, only a few entrepreneurs are worried about the threat of bankruptcy. Alarmingly, many entrepreneurs assessed their work ability to be at a critically low level, and a large share of entrepreneurs experiences long-term harmful stress. These results were discovered in the Menesty yrittäjänä (“Successful Entrepreneurship”) survey conducted by Elo and Suomen Yrittäjät.

Applications for the second round of business cost support have been open for about four weeks. The Suomen Yrittäjät chief economist says that statistics and rejection reasons for the support show that round three of the support should better consider businesses’ cost structures and operational nature.

The year 2020 will go down in history as the year of coronavirus. This crisis dominated the advocacy work that we, Suomen Yrittäjät, do. Our voice was heard when we proposed action to support businesses. The task of Suomen Yrittäjät is to tell decision-makers what reforms need to be done, or not done, to ensure that businesses can operate as well as possible. Our advocacy work became even more important during the coronavirus year of 2020.

Ioan Canta is the Migrant Entrepreneur of the Year 2020. The finalists in this year’s tight race were serial entrepreneurs Daria and Jean-François Flogny and digital entrepreneur Alexander Ivaine.

The second round of business cost subsidy will be open for applications at the end of December. Businesses can start preparing for applications now.