Fin Min-Econ Has Firepower To Tackle COVID Lockdown Not Too Severe

Speaking at a Reuters event, German Finance Minister and Deputy Chancellor Olaf Scholz stating that the German economy has the requisite firepower to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and that the impact of lockdown on the economy will not be too severe.

• Adds that nobody can predict when the pandemic will be over and it makes no sense to speculate when lockdown might be lifted. Comes just hours after Chancellor Angela Merkel stated that the current lockdown could last until April.
• Scholz says that there will be an opportunity to remove environmentally unfriendly subsidies, but not at the present time.
• Scholz, a member of the junior coalition partner, the centre-left Social Democratic Party, is the party's candidate for the position of chancellor in the autumn federal election. As such over the coming months Scholz, who consistently polls better than his party, is likely to try to both increase his public profile and differentiate his policies from those of his CDU colleagues in gov't.