SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, March 24 (EUROPA PRESS) -The investment attraction platform Why Tenerife? commemorates next Thursday its tenth anniversary with the participation of the five partners that make up the brand, the Cabildo de Tenerife, through the areas of External Action and Tourism of Tenerife, the Chamber of Commerce of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the Port Authority, Canary Islands Special Zone (ZEC) and Tenerife Free Zone (ZFT).
The event will have four sector tables focused on strategic economic sectors, technology and R&D, video games, audiovisual sector, innovation, free zones, port activity and offshore wind energy and a panel of 22 leading speakers will address strategic lines and key projects to diversify the economy and create employment.
The CEO of Foreign Action, Liskel Álvarez, explained this Friday at a press conference that over these ten years an average of 140 actions to promote Tenerife have been carried out, 14 per year, and some 1,000 have been attended. inquiries from companies interested in investing in the island, at an average of 100 inquiries per year.
Álvarez explained that through ‘Why Tenerife?’ Promotional materials and information on investments are also prepared, sectoral sales brochures, attention services, advice and support to companies and promotional campaigns abroad to make the island known as an investment destination.
DIGITAL NOMADS
In addition, the platform has enriched its services with the ‘Work and Play’ program linked to digital nomads and remote workers, to promote actions that contribute to creating activity on the island for this sector and building loyalty.
Liskel Álvarez highlighted that “the sectors that attract investment on the island have diversified, along with the tourism and port sector, other areas such as those related to technology and innovation are being consolidated.”
For the CEO, the creation of the platform has been a great success for the promotion of Tenerife and she emphasized that “one of the key aspects to attract investment is the existence of talent, which makes the island a pole of attraction for knowledge , innovation and technology”.
Santiago Sesé, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, indicated that “Why Tenerife is an example of institutional collaboration that has remained a pillar in the economic development of the island.”
Sesé, who also valued advantages such as the geostrategic position of the archipelago or the tax incentives it has, insisted that “it is up to everyone to take on the challenge of being investment facilitators, and that involves streamlining and simplifying the administrative procedures to facilitate the landing of companies”.
In addition, he said, “once we have managed to install them, we must continue taking care of them so that they grow and reinvest in the island, thus generating a pull effect.”
According to data from the United Nations, he insisted, “60% of the foreign investment that destinations receive comes from companies already installed that decide to reinvest again, so it is essential that these companies know that we are at their side.”
POTENTIAL OF THE FREE TRADE ZONE
For her part, the special State delegate for the Free Trade Zone, Margarita Pena, highlighted that “the success stories that have occurred in the Free Trade Zone, with the establishment in recent years of four industrial companies, show that the Free Trade Zone may represent an opportunity for the development of an export industry in Tenerife that generates qualified and permanent jobs”.
In the coming years, he commented, “the Tenerife Free Zone aspires to improve the services it offers to expand its current versatility for storage and logistics.”
The president of the Consortium, Pablo Hernández González-Barreda, also highlighted that the Canary Islands Special Zone (ZEC) has allowed attracting hundreds of projects to the Canary Islands and Tenerife that have taken advantage of the incentives of the Canary Islands Economic and Fiscal Regime (REF) to develop.
“Unique companies in the world such as a submarine, pioneering circular economy plants, a serial R&D plant or animation and video game studios that carry out activity with leading world platforms such as Netflix, Apple or Amazon, which have been installed in Tenerife thanks to the ZEC,” he said.
Hernández also qualified that “it is necessary to value the fact that taxation alone would not have attracted these companies, they come through an ecosystem in which all the institutions that make up Why Tenerife? are coordinated together with the Canary Islands Society for Economic Development (Proexca ) and the Government of the Canary Islands”.
At the meeting, the joint work carried out by the different institutions and organizations to attract investment was valued, according to a note from the Cabildo.
In the year 2022 the good figures seem to be consolidated and according to recent data from the DATA INVEST database, investment in the islands has been 269 million euros.
In the last decade, a total of 198 companies have settled in Tenerife, from 36 different countries, and 13,500 jobs have been created. Regarding the countries of origin, most of the companies are from Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom.
