Ken Skates, Minister for Transport and the Economy talks to Mark Powney, Managing Director of Business News Wales about the funding available to businesses across Wales.

Interview Highlights:

This is a huge, unprecedented crisis that we're facing, probably the biggest crisis in terms of economic fallout since World War 2.

We expect further support to come from U.K. government in the form of a wage subsidy scheme that's absolutely essential in order to keep businesses afloat and to ensure that people have money going into their pockets during this incredibly difficult time.

I've spoken with colleagues and counterparts in Westminster about the need for a wage subsidy scheme and I hope that we will hear something in a matter of days.

The ideal way of securing the grants would be through local authorities with whom we're in discussion. Our aim is to utilise existing systems rather than develop new application processes that could lead to lengthy applications being made. We want to avoid that. We want the simplest, cleanest way of getting money out the door.

We're working with local authorities as fast as we possibly can. The money will be available to us from UK government from the start of the financial year.

We are looking at making sure that we can tie together support from across governments, from the banks, from the Development Bank of Wales and from other agencies.

All information about support will be available in a simple dashboard that we'll be tweeting out from my account every single day.

I've spoken today with the high street banks and the Development Bank of Wales and I made the comments to the high street banks, that they need to show the same sort of support that they had back in 2008.

I think it's fair to say that the UK government have heard the message loud and clear that we need to be there as an integral part of forming interventions so that when announcements are made, we as a Welsh government are able to say, yes, that will apply in Wales and we want to make sure that we can because we recognise that it's going to have to be a consistent message for businesses across the UK during what will be a very turbulent period.

Whatever political differences there may be between myself and ministers in Westminster, they don't matter. They do not matter. Now we are all turning our guns in the direction of Coronavirus, and we will work together regardless of political differences to overcome this huge challenge. That's what the people of our country would expect.

We've got a discretionary fund opening which will target money at those viable businesses that just need a bridge.

I think it's safe to say that the shape of the economy will change quite considerably over the next 12 to 24 months. So too, will human behaviours. And I've already set up a very tight team within government that are looking at the recovery phase from Coronavirus.