SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, March 23. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The President of the Government of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, has predicted this Wednesday that 2022 will be a “complicated and difficult” year due to the consequences derived from the rise in prices and the war in Ukraine, but he has insisted that the Canary Islands are “more prepared” to face adversity.
At the close of the second day of the ‘Debate on the State of Nationality’, he appealed to “maintain and improve” the data on the unemployed and those affiliated with Social Security, something that “is not going to be easy” due to the international situation.
Torres has pointed out that “it has been fundamental” that the fiscal rules be suspended to maintain public services and the productive fabric and has endorsed the position of the European Commission to put a cap on the price of gas, compensate production costs, set a price electricity companies in the wholesale sector, guarantee reduced prices to vulnerable sectors and reduce profits.
Likewise, he has demanded the recovery of the ‘Covid fund’, that transport in the Canary Islands be helped because it is a remote and fragmented region and that port and airport taxes be reviewed so as not to harm tourism.
The president has admitted that we are experiencing a “difficult moment” but recalled that on the dates of the same debate last year not all the deputies could fit, the immunization of the population was 5%, there were curfews, limited capacity and suspension of acts and closure of companies and almost 300,000 unemployed.
He has claimed joint decision-making with the EU and the State and urged that this new situation “serve as a strength for the future” because “it is very easy to govern in easy times” and now “hard times have come”.
“Let’s learn from this moment,” he stressed, so that when the economic boom returns, the situation on the islands can be “turned around.”