Pedro Sánchez sees the Spanish economy “in the Champions League season after season” and considers that Spain has become “the place to be”, as he told investors in a forum in which he announced that the Government plans to launch a “large sovereign fund” in order to mobilize up to 120,000 million euros from private investors. The base of this fund, which will be managed through the Official Credit Institute (ICO), will be 10.5 billion euros from the EU Next Generation funds that expire this year.
The idea that the president will present together with the Minister of Economy, Carlos Body, next Monday and which will be called the España Crece Fund aims to comply with the recommendations of former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who in his recipes to get the EU out of lethargy and boost its competitiveness included the need to mobilize up to 800,000 million euros. The Government believes that Spain is in a position to compete to mobilize private debt and attract national and international investors.
The fund will work through loans, guarantees or capital instruments that will prioritize nine key sectors of economic productivity: housing, energy, digitalization, Artificial Intelligence, reindustrialization, circular economy, infrastructure, water and sanitation or security.
“If the NextGen funds were an exercise of European sovereignty, the España Crece Fund will be an exercise of national sovereignty,” said the president, who intends for this Spanish fund to extend the “push” that the recovery funds have provided, which have allowed a “reformist impulse” of 63,000 million euros, “making the legacy lasting” beyond 2026. And the recovery funds expire this year, despite Spain’s attempts to maintain tools of pooled debt within the EU.
“European funds not only helped us resist and recover, but also in a very difficult time, but have also allowed us to change course and transform ourselves forever,” he said about that project that was launched to get out of the pandemic crisis with expansive spending.
“At a time when there are great powers that are trying to unilaterally impose tariffs and trade wars, we create spaces where investors and companies will be able to transact, relate in a safe, predictable, ultimately respectful way and also betting on an ambitious budget to finance European public goods, which is the battle we are fighting in Brussels,” he explained.
Sánchez has claimed the good performance of the Spanish economy and has attributed it, to a large extent, to the coalition government, and also to companies, investors and workers. “The best thing about Spain is its human capital, it is its people,” he said at the ‘Spain Investors Day’ forum. “On many occasions analysts believe that stability is provided by an absolute majority in Parliament. Stability is provided by the ability to negotiate agreements that governments may have with those who are different and that is what I claim, because there are the data and there are the results,” said the president, aware that he has a parliamentary minority that makes it difficult to approve laws. However, Sánchez’s message to investors is clear: Spain is growing at 2.9% or setting records on the stock market, despite the turbulence in politics.
He has also sold Spain as a “safe value, a refuge value.” “Here you are not going to find trade tensions, you are not going to find geopolitical risks, you are not going to find legal insecurity, although there are obviously reforms that we have to make in the legislative sphere or there are legislative frameworks that perhaps some of those who are present here are not entirely comfortable with. But of course what there is is social peace and of course there is also territorial cohesion,” said the president in reference to the calming of the political crisis in Catalonia.
“Decades ago, during the last years of Franco’s regime, that campaign called ‘Spain is different’ became popular, Spain is different, and it was a message aimed at attracting foreign tourism, but it also resonated deeply among the Spaniards themselves and, at times, it even resonated in a negative way, with a negative meaning that led us to undervalue the potential of our country. Today, at a time of global retreat, if we are different it is because our slogan could be updated as ‘Spain is the place to be’”, stated the president, who assured that “there is no democracy in the world that has undergone a transformation like the Spanish one in the last half century.” “We are a success story,” he concluded.
The president has acknowledged that he did not want to fall into “self-complacency” by admitting that inequality gaps continue to exist and that child poverty is “unacceptable”: “We have to manage to reduce this dramatic reality to zero or increase the real disposable income of households.” He has also made a plea in favor of the Government’s immigration policy against the speeches of PP and Vox. “In Spain there is no one left over, on the contrary, we lack people. Between being a closed and poor nation, what Spain does is open itself to the world to guarantee the prosperity and financing of its welfare state and its social and territorial cohesion in the present and in the future.”
Source: www.eldiario.es
