“At this time, what main concern do we have? Inflation”. Nadia Calviño, first vice-president and minister of Economic Affairs, has not hesitated about what is the problem that most urges the Executive during her participation in the XXXVII Meeting of the Circle of Economy, which is being held in Barcelona. In a telematic intervention, Calviño has highlighted the measures put in place by the Government and has been confident that the consumer price index will be “around 2%” during the next year, after having already marked the maximum peaks and that in April it stood at 8.4%.
The vice president has pointed out that inflation “is a concern that we have to tackle as soon as possible”, although she wanted to emphasize that it is a problem that the Government does not control, since its origin is the rise in energy prices and raw materials, in addition to the collapse of value chains. In any case, he pointed out that an important point to achieve the Government’s objective will be the agreement reached with Portugal and endorsed by the European Commission to disconnect gas prices in Spain from wholesale markets, limiting the price to a maximum of 50 euros In the Iberic Peninsule. That pact is pending its unblocking by Brussels, but first the Spanish and Portuguese governments must reach an agreement on the technical details and send it to Brussels.
Despite stating that it is a problem that needs to be “tackled as soon as possible”, Calviño has relativized the problem: “In Spain we are concerned about price increases, while in other countries what is of concern is food, because they depended almost entirely on the supplies from Ukraine.
Calviño has praised the united response of the European Union to the conflict in Ukraine, which has allowed a faster recovery of the economy and, above all, a lesser impact on investments. The Spanish Government forecasts that in 2025 the deficit will be below 3% and the public debt will be less than 110% of GDP.
financial regulation
In a previous colloquium, the president of CaixaBank, José Ignacio Goirigolzarri, called for the unification of regulations for the entire financial sector, both traditional banking and new service models. “It cannot be that we do not have a regulation that is not the same to carry out the same activity”, he has stated.
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Goirigolzarri has defended competition and the entry of new actors in the sector, but has questioned the fact that not all actors fight with the “same regulations”, considering that subsequent arbitrations end up becoming “a seed of instability of a system”. For this reason, he has called on the regulators to draw up equal rules for all participants “the sooner the better”, since, in his opinion, the struggle between operators will not be a competition, “strictly”, in the sector.
In any case, the executive has positively highlighted the entry of new operators and has defended the power that traditional entities can prove thanks to the provision of “information on their clients” that allows them to offer a better service.
José María Álvarez Pallete, president of Telefónica -present at the same colloquium with Goirigolzarri-, for his part, stressed that the world is experiencing the “greatest technological revolution of humanity”, which will lead to the destruction of “millions of jobs ”, but that will create others. “The main challenge as a society is training”, he pointed out, referring to the relocation of professionals in the new sectors. Telefónica, he has said, is training 23,000 workers for these functions. Álvarez-Pallete has stated that Spain is going to need 400,000 new jobs, which is why he sees it as crucial to “train the population” in technology to combat inequality. According to him, Spain is well positioned for the new era: “There is ten times more fiber [óptica] in Spain than in Germany.
The president of Telefónica has defended that the pandemic has “accelerated five years” of digitization and that it left Telefónica in uncertainty: “We did not know how the network was going to hold up with refugees in their homes for months.” He has also warned that technology is being used to “viralize news” and that some tools compete in a context of the “attention economy”. “They put the content that most attracts us, radicalizing us in what we like”, he has defended. On the influence of the networks, Pallete has highlighted the assault on the Capitol after Donald Trump lost the elections. He has equated this moment with the fall of the world in Berlin.
In a previous colloquium, the president of the Catalan employers’ organization Fomento del Trabajo, Josep Sánchez Llibre, has asked the Government to eliminate the wealth tax and to harmonize successions and donations downwards. “Part of the political conflict between the different autonomous communities would be resolved”, he reflected. Likewise, he has demanded a reduction in personal income tax so that Spaniards can “recover the income lost due to the increase in inflation.” On this aspect he has pointed out that the State administrations have collected “33,000 million more due to inflation.”
The president of the Círculo de Empresarios, Manuel Pérez-Sala, has highlighted that “in Europe the Wealth tax as such does not exist”, for which reason he has joined Sánchez Llibre in the petition to eliminate the tax and harmonize the Spanish tax system to the European. Likewise, he has warned that the Next Generation EU recovery funds “are conditional on structural reforms that are not the ones being undertaken by the Government.” According to him, the labor reform is not going to prevent unemployment of between 13% and 15% and he has defended changing the pension system with a delay in the retirement age.
Jose Manuel Lara Award
Angels Pinol
King Felipe VI closed the morning session with the presentation of the José Manuel Lara Award for ambition and business purpose, which this year celebrates its third edition and is awarded annually by the Círculo de Economía. Accompanied by the Minister of Science, Diana Morant, and the Government delegate, María Eugènia Gay, the monarch was received by the leadership of the entity and various institutional positions in one of the esplanades of the Vela hotel, in the Port, submitted to a discreet police surveillance that has contrasted with the iron security device of previous years. There have been no incidents or protests in the vicinity of the hotel. A year ago, the King inaugurated the conference and he did coincide with the president Pere Aragonès or the mayor Ada Colau, absent today from the conference.
In advance, Felipe VI and Queen Letizia have presented the 10th National Research Awards at the Fòrum, whose act for the first time has been held in Barcelona. In a brief speech in the auditorium, full of businessmen, who stood up when the monarch burst into the room, the King spoke about ideas, innovation and entrepreneurial spirit and stressed that Spain cannot be left behind in the culture of innovation. “We can’t relax,” he has said. The winners of the Cercle have been Mireia Trepat, co-founder and marketing manager of Freshly Cosmetics, president of Inesfly, and Muriel Bourgeois, CEO and co-founder of MiCuento.
