Santa Cruz de Tenerife is the city with the lower tax burden in Spain, which makes it the most attractive to invest. At least this is the conclusion of the Foundation for the Advancement of Economic Freedom, which places the chicharrera capital at the head of the Index of Economic Freedom of Spanish Cities (ILECE), which it publishes for the sixth consecutive year.
Yesterday afternoon, the Royal Casino of Tenerife, welcomed the delivery of this award to the Consistory that reaches a “satisfactory” level. When the Foundation talks about economic freedom, it refers not only to reduced taxation, but also to outsourcing services to be carried out by professional companies, to reducing public spending, in short, to regulating the economy through the free market, with little or no public intervention.
In the case of the capital of Tenerife, the authors of ILECE have highlighted in a special way that “the strong rise experienced the previous year, which already brought Santa Cruz to the second national position, was not temporary.” The graph of the city shows a sustained progress of almost ten points throughout the six editions of ILECE, from 58.86 in 2018 to the current 68.45, which assures it first place.
According to the Foundation, this trajectory of the capital of Tenerife, especially in recent years, “is due to a contained public workforce and fiscal pressure compared to the rest of the cities in the index”.
Thus, the capital passes in the four areas of the index: general macroeconomic performance, magnitude of the workforce, municipal intervention and taxation. “In this last area, the Canarian co-capital has the lowest taxation of the 50 cities analyzed.” Even so, from the Foundation it is recommended that you reduce your costs, subcontract services and lower taxes, to distance yourself from Alicante and Almería, the second and third city of ILECE.
The mayor, José Manuel Bermúdez, thanked the recognition and recalled that “this is a trajectory of several years during which we have tried to establish the conditions for Santa Cruz to develop more effectively in economic and employment matters.”
The mayor pointed out that low taxation means savings of “more than 11 million each year, for thousands of families and small and medium-sized companies”, a policy that must be accompanied “by others that encourage consumption, and achieve an efficient circulation of generated assets.
He made reference to street activities such as Full Moon, but also to Consumer Bonds, two measures whose objective is “to guarantee good economic health in the city.”
A statement that the mayor summarized by offering data such as that 25% of the companies in Tenerife are concentrated in the capital; throughout 2022 and the beginning of 2023 the number of unemployed people has remained below 21,000; more than 30% of the employment contracts signed in Tenerife are based in the capital; or that this February the largest number of people affiliated with Social Security was reached, 132,800.
