SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, July 4 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The acting vice president and counselor for Finance, Budgets and European Affairs, Román Rodríguez, stated on Tuesday that the outgoing Government of the Canary Islands “is going to leave the Canary Islands with a healthy economy and a more dynamic labor market than ever” once they have met the employment data and Social Security affiliations for May together with the increase in tax collection or tourist billing, which certify the intense recovery of the archipelago.
Rodríguez assured that the intensity of the recovery places the archipelago at pre-pandemic levels and that the evolution of the economy in recent months presupposes that the GDP of the islands -in the absence of definitive data- has already reached registered in 2019.
“The real GDP of the year 2022 was four tenths of that registered in 2019, while the nominal had already exceeded it by 1.2%, with which it is quite probable that we have recovered the ground lost due to the Covid crisis” , Rodríguez pointed out in a note.
The acting vice president also highlighted that total collection has grown on the islands by some 130 million euros in the first five months of 2023 compared to the same period of the previous year.
“The tax revenue data is especially relevant, because it continues to grow in an environment of decreasing inflation, which shows that this increase is related to economic strength, not exclusively with the increase in prices, and with the greater number of taxpayers ” he added.
According to the latest data published by the Canary Islands Tax Agency, REF tax collection up to May reached 1,096 million euros, while last year it stood at 965 million euros.
This increase coincides with that registered for the entire collection, since the amount obtained from own and transferred taxes has practically not suffered any year-on-year variation.
RECORD QUOTES
The number of registered unemployed in the Canary Islands last June amounted to 174,019, which represents a decrease of 1.43% compared to the previous month and 8.53% compared to the same month in 2022.
The number of Social Security contributors, for its part, stood at 879,396, which means 0.07% more than in May 2023 and 4.11% more than in May of last year, and the best data from the historical series.
With regard to tourism, the Government highlights that the number of tourists arriving on the islands between January and May of this year reached 9.6 million, which is 1.6 million more than in the same period of 2022 and a increase of 20.2%.
This figure is also higher than that registered during the first five months of 2019 by 5.8%.
Tourism spending, for its part, has also registered significant growth compared to 2019. According to the latest official data, the Canary Islands entered 5,353 million euros during the first quarter of 2023, which represents an increase of 50% with compared to 2019.
Similarly, the average expenditure per tourist and trip stood at 1,432 euros, which implies a growth of 44.5% compared to 2019.
