The Costa Rican government announced this Friday a plan to offer a benefit of 200 thousand colones, approximately $347.00 USD, a month to families affected financially by the crisis caused by Covid-19, this includes people that have been laid off or have had their income reduced.

Part of the funds will come from an extraordinary budget, reassigning funds, and by maintaining the fuel price in moments when prices are going down with the idea that the government can use the difference for this purpose.

“The proposal on fuel prices and cutting back the Government’s budget to support the population affected will be presented next week, with the extraordinary budget, to the Legislative Assembly”, explained President Carlos Alvarado.

The Government estimates an approximate 375,000 families that have been financially affected, but they consider this number can increase to close to 600,000 or more in the upcoming weeks. An approximate 200,000 people from the tourism sector are currently not working.

On a second phase, the Government is also considering applying a solidarity tax to be deducted from the salaries of the private and public employees that are keeping their jobs and earn more than 1 million colones a month (approximately $1,735 USD), the percentage or amount of this solidarity tax is still being discussed, but the higher the salary the higher the percentage.

Companies generating income might also be required to contribute.

Other measures proposed by the government include putting on hold all salary raises in the public sector as well as any programmed fee increase in electricity.