The employers predict ‘full employment’ on the island within a maximum period of eight years if the large pending infrastructures are carried out
SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Nov. 10 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Cabildo of Tenerife and CEOE-Tenerife have agreed this Friday in betting on debureaucratization in management, increasing public investment and executing the island budget to “relaunch” the island’s economy.
At a press conference on the occasion of the presentation of the book ‘2022. The economy of Tenerife in graphics’ prepared by the director of Consulting of Corporación 5, José Miguel González, the president of the Cabildo, Rosa Dávila, has set the objective of Tenerife recovering economic “leadership” and once again being the “locomotive” of the archipelago.
He has indicated that “if Tenerife catches a cold, the Canary Islands catches the flu” and has appealed to achieve a “new boost” in the island economy after the “turning point” of 2020, as a result of the pandemic, and which has not yet been confirmed. has recovered.
Thus, for example, it has been raised as a “challenge” that the unemployment rate is below the regional average, that the GDP before the pandemic is recovered and that the difference in GDP per capita in relation to the rest of the country stops increasing. State and the European Union.
The president of CEOE-Tenerife, Pedro Alfonso, has commented that the appearance of covid-19 “was a missile” in the island’s economy that has not yet recovered despite the deployment of ERTE, direct aid and ICO credits.
“The economy is not starting,” he indicated, stressing that the problem of regional financing, an “excess of bureaucracy” and legislation that “is not inclined” to economic development but rather to “prior sanction” is “dragging along.”
Afonso has assessed that the Cabildo’s budget exceeds 1,000 million euros for the first time and is now expected to speed up its execution, especially with the “large infrastructures” pending on the island.
In fact, he has predicted that if the large projects go ahead, within a maximum period of eight years there could be ‘full employment’ on the island.
AN “INADMISSIBLE” UNEMPLOYMENT RATE
José Miguel González has detailed that Tenerife “is an economic engine” of the archipelago although he has warned that the GDP per capita is moving away from the Spanish average, “and the trend is getting worse”, while calling it “unacceptable” that the unemployment rate is greater than 10%.
He has pointed out that tourism and construction are the “great drivers” of the island economy, to which the public sector has been added with increasing impact, which already represents a fifth of the island’s GDP.
Along these lines, he has pointed out that construction is recovering but there is still “a long way” to reach its historical highs while tourism gains income due to the “effect of inflation”, given that the average stay falls.
González has not hidden that “in the short term” the tourism-construction binomial in the Canary Islands is unbeatable because it is capable of “creating a lot of employment in a short time” but he has recognized that in the medium and long term it would be advisable to introduce new productive sectors linked to knowledge , digitalization and training.
“It is not about eliminating tourism,” he commented, given that in small-scale economies like the Canary Islands, specialization allows “obtaining advantages” and now “the leisure economy” is the fastest growing in the world, a subsector I cannot forget Tenerife because it is a “very vulnerable and very dependent” territory.
