The measures necessary for health policy to combat the corona pandemic have led to the extensive or complete closure of business operations in various industries. Restrictions are currently being loosened in the summer months, but with numerous companies or self-employed persons, business operations are still completely or partially limited due to the corona crisis.

Against the backdrop of the corona crisis, both the German government and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia have launched corona economic aid programs for companies and freelancers. The aim of emergency aid, bridging aid I-III (plus), the new jump start (plus) and the other corona funding programs is to provide liquidity support/compensation for self-employed, small and medium-sized companies that directly or indirectly suffer corona-related losses or are affected by conditions or closures for to grant sales losses and thus secure them in existence.

The corona economic aid programs have so far been staggered into 4 phases:

- bridging aid -First funding phase (“Bridging Aid I”) concerns the funding periods June to August 2020;

- Bridging aid -Second funding phase (“Bridging Aid II”) concerns the funding periods September to December 2020;

- Bridging aid -Third Funding Phase (“Bridging Aid III”) concerns the funding periods November 2020 to June 2021.

In the funding period from January to June 2021, it was also possible to apply for restart starter. In addition, the funding programme for the (extended) Extraordinary Economic Assistance (November and December assistance) was launched.

- Bypassing aid - Fourth funding phase (“Bridging Aid III Plus”) concerns the funding periods July to September 2021. The Restart Relief Plus funding programme also covers the funding period from July to September 2021.

Any further funding phases are still open at the moment.

The federal government provides the necessary budgetary resources for these equity benefits of the various phases of corona economic aid.

The state of North Rhine-Westphalia has commissioned its five district governments to handle the corona economic aid. The processing of corona economic aid and the commissioning of district governments creates high volumes of work for both district governments and for the Ministry of Economy, Innovation, Digitalization and Energy of North Rhine-Westphalia (MWIDE), which requires support to process.

For this reason, the MWIDE is looking for support for the currently ongoing funding phase (until September 31, 2021) and a subsequent new funding phase (September 2021-June 2022) in the processing of applications that are still open.

The business aid programs from the first and second funding phases have mainly been processed in application processing. The required support advertised here mainly relates to the handling of the expected applications for bridging aid III Plus in the future and restarting aid III Plus. In addition, old cases of the third funding phase can probably have to be completed to a small extent.

The subject of the contract is the support of district governments in fulfilling their duties as a licensing authority, in particular the administrative processing and handling of bridging aid III, III Plus and restarting aid plus in the application and approval phase. The approvals are carried out by the district governments themselves in a final formal process step. Payouts are made through the district governments' cash departments.

The number of applications for bridging aid III and restarting aid (funding period from November 2020 to June 2021) amounted to a total of around 110,000 applications as of July 22, 2021. Similar case numbers are assumed for the bridging aid III Plus and restarter Plus. Interim work peaks due to increased application waves may be expected.

Applications for bridging aid III Plus can be submitted since 23.07.2021. The application phase for restarter plus has begun since 19.07.2021.

According to current estimates, at least 64 full-time equivalents (FTE) per month are required to support the processing of pending and future applications from these funding phases.

A correspondingly large staffing requirement is expected for possible further, new funding phases.

The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs (BMWi) basically provides a central IT application platform for economic aid, which enables processing via a software-assisted specialist procedure for the licensing bodies of the states. The platform is internet-based, so there are no further technical requirements for a service provider. The application for the corona economic aid is mainly made digitally by tax consultants, lawyers, sworn accountants or auditors via the website provided by the federal government. The platform is still to be used for application processing.

Further information can be found in the service description.