Berlin: Prominent German newspaper ‘Bild’ has drawn up an ‘itemised invoice’ of £130 billion that Beijing ‘owes’ to Berlin for the outbreak of the pandemic coronavirus. The newspaper has said that Germany has suffered huge losses due to the spread of the pandemic and China is responsible for it.
‘Bild’ in the invoice has itemised the losses Germany has and would suffer due to coronavirus. The country has charged China for it. In the invoice list, the newspaper has mentioned that China should pay Germany €27 billion for suffering losses in the tourism sector. It has also said China should shell out €7.2 billion for the German film industry, a million euros an hour for German airline Lufthansa and €50 billion for the losses German small businesses has suffered.
In its calculation ‘Bild’ has also said that if Germany’s GDP falls by 4.2 per cent due to the influence of the pandemic coronavirus, then the figure ‘What China owes us’ is €1,784 (£1,550) per person.
Germany is the fourth country after the United States, United Kingdom and France to vent its anger at China from where coronavirus started in December last year. It has blamed Beijing for trying to cover up the true scale of the crisis.
Donald Trump had earlier said Saturday that China will face consequences if it was ‘knowingly responsible’ for unleashing the coronavirus pandemic. “It could have been stopped in China before it started and it wasn’t, and the whole world is suffering because of it,” Trump was quoted as saying by the US media.
“If it was a mistake, a mistake is a mistake. But if they were knowingly responsible, then there should be consequences,” the US president added.
The US and some of its allies have time and again questioned China’s lack of transparency in sharing facts about coronavirus. Their accusations have some weight, because a couple of days back China admitted that it had erred in Wuhan death toll figures. Coronavirus originated from the city of Wuhan in Hubei province. China revised the number of deaths in Wuhan due to coronavirus by over 50 per cent.
United Kingdom on the other hand has said that the COVID-19 virus originated in a Wuhan lab and not a wet market as claimed by China.
Meanwhile Beijing responded to the charges drawn up by ‘Bild’. It said that the invoice ‘stirs up xenophobia and nationalism’.
Agencies