CEOE-Tenerife and CCE warn of an “impoverishment” on the islands and claim to raise funds from the REA and update the transport subsidy
SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 13 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The two most representative business confederations of the Canary Islands, CEOE-Tenerife and CCE, have sealed a common front to work together in the search for measures to deal with economic uncertainty and try to attract investment through the REF incentives .
This was stated this Tuesday in a joint press conference by the presidents of both organizations, Pedro Alfonso and Pedro Ortega, respectively, who have urged the regional Executive to lower taxes, at least temporarily, reduce public spending and take measures to mitigate the effects of inflation.
Alfonso has been “concerned” that the regional government is going to manage next year a budget of more than 10,000 million – around 25% of the GDP of the autonomous community – which continues to grow at the expense of family income and companies.
He has stressed that the Government also has to work on reducing expenses and on the contrary, he stresses that it generates “mandatory expenses” that it later has to cover with fiscal pressure, for which he understands that a “balance” has to be reached.
Along these lines, he has pointed out that “no solutions are given” and meanwhile families and companies continue to contribute to “a sack that has holes” with the feeling that “everything is insatiable” and funds are running out.
He has criticized the fact that governments make decisions unilaterally, without consensus and related to electoral interests or out of pure “idealism”, citing taxes on electricity companies or banks as an example, the latter branded as “illegal and inappropriate”.
Alfonso has recognized that the situation is “complicated” and that there is a general feeling of “impoverishment” among families and companies and has proposed, among other measures, returning to the 20 million item in the REA that was in 1995 to help reduce the cost of the shopping basket and incorporate new products that can benefit from transport subsidies, something that would especially help non-capital islands.
He has also demanded the updating of prices in public tenders because there are companies that “lose money” with the contests and stressed that the Government “did nothing” when it was warned that the prices of containers rose in price at the beginning of the year and there were delays in deliveries.
IMMIGRATION CONSUMES PUBLIC RESOURCES
As for the open debate on the limitation to the population in the Canary Islands, he ruled out that this is linked to low per capita income, while appealing to try to control immigration, both public and private, because they are dependent people who “live” on public resources, to the point that they are budgeted every year.
Likewise, he regretted that the Canary Islands have to “socially support” the deaths of migrants who try to reach the islands. “It is an image that we do not want to give,” he stressed.
Ortega has valued the meeting point of both confederations to work hand in hand, also with the administrations, to “overcome large waves and in different directions”, at a delicate moment in which underlying inflation is already almost at the same level in the Canary Islands than in the rest of Spain.
He has asked the public authorities for “clarity and forcefulness” in taking economic measures to promote economic activity and consumption and not seek “headlines” such as limiting the prices of the shopping basket, the ecotax or the rejection of nomads digital.
In this sense, he has pointed out that governments are facing inflation based on “the consequences and not the causes” and has requested, in order to alleviate the effects of the rise in costs, that prices be updated in the face of the 100% subsidy of the transports.
