MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st April, 2020) Small businesses in the United Kingdom have already received more than 6 billion Pounds ($7.4 billion) in emergency grants amid the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak said on Tuesday.
"In just over a month we've paid out over 490,000 grants for small businesses, worth more than �6billion," Sunak wrote on Twitter.
At a press briefing earlier in the day, a UK Treasury spokesperson announced that roughly 500,000 small companies have received emergency grants from the government, each worth between 10,000 and 25,000 pounds.
In total, Sunak has pledged to offer more than 330 billion pounds in loans to prop up the country's businesses amid the ongoing global pandemic that has brought economic activity to a halt. Of this total, 12 billion pounds were available in the form of emergency grants.
As of Tuesday, the UK Department of Health and Social Care has reported more than 129,000 cases of COVID-19 since the start of the outbreak, up 4,301 over the preceding 24 hours. The death toll currently stands at 17,337, after 823 more deaths were confirmed.
