Torrent certifies an agreement with employers and unions to create 70,000 jobs and mobilize 3,200 million until 2025
Goal reindustrialize Catalonia. This is the maxim with which the ‘conseller’ of Empresa i Treball, Roger Torrent, has designed and agreed with employers and unions on the new industrial strategy for the next three years. A shock plan to reverse the progressive decline in which the Catalan secondary sector has been installed for decades and which will be endowed with a record budget of up to €3.2 billion. Funds to attract foreign investment, aid to move towards green energies, less bureaucratic burden, more and better industrial land available and greater connectivity between polygons are just some of the measures included in the new National Agreement for Industry (NIP).
These are the keys to the 2022-2025 strategy presented this Friday in the Barcelona Free Zone.
The Generalitat of Catalunya will mobilize a budget record for this new industrial pact. Reserved a total of 2,817 million euros of the Catalan administration’s own resources, to which it intends to add some 400 million more European funds and opens the door to lend another 450 million in cheap loans to companies. It practically doubles the 1,800 million euros that the Generalitat invested in the previous National Pact for Industry, which was criticized for merely including day-to-day current expenses of the departments and not extraordinary and transformative investments.
The success or failure of the current Pacte is conditional on, among other things, the good health of the coalition de Govern and its survival until the end of the legislature. Well, each year the items reserved for industrial policy will depend on the approval or not of new budgets. If these do not prosper, the games will be frozen.
More employment and higher quality
Industry is a sector that in Catalonia -as in most European economies- has been in retreat for several years. In the last two decades there have been 82 relocations, which have caused the loss of 15,219 jobs, according to data from the Generalitat. And the departure of companies, far from being a memory of the past, is a threat to the future that the signatories of the pact recognize and move to avoid. Hence this record investment from the public sector, both to try to prevent the flight of companies, and to attract and accompany new investments that settle in Catalan territory.
That is why one of the main objectives of the National Pact is to increase the weight of the industry in the GDP and in the occupation. There are currently 442,000 Catalans employed in the industry, according to the latest data from Idescat, and Torrent aspires to reach 510,000 for the end of the legislature. Also to feminize a historically masculinized sector and ensure that a third of those employed are women.
More green energy and more efficient
Although it is not one of the items that concentrates the greatest investment, it is one of the most disruptive with respect to the previous industrial strategy. The Generalitat and the social agents are clear -especially in the current context- that energy will be one of the keys to competitiveness of the industry of the future. To this end, they will dedicate 403 million euros over three years, with the aim of increasing the renewable energy. Currently this represents 34% of the energy consumed in Catalonia and they hope that it reaches 40% in 2025.
For this, they are committed to the proliferation of energy communities, that is, groups of companies or companies and private residences with solar panels or other elements of self-generation of energy. As well as the opening of biorefineries, where urban waste and especially that from the meat industry can be reused and converted into useful energy.
More green energy and doing more with less are the two recipes of the Pacte. And it is that the bulk of the investment will go to rehabilitate 65,000 homes in three years, with the aim of reducing their energy consumption by a minimum of 30%.
Digitization and industry 4.0
The ‘conselleria’ de Empresa aspires to attract industrial projects from abroad that complement and multiply with the already existing productive fabric and help it to make a leap in quality in the new technologies. As an example, from the department that Torrent directs they put the recent investment of the South Korean company Iljin, which will manufacture microchips in Mont-roig del Camp (Tarragona) and arrived after a round of contacts promoted by the Generalitat. The Pacte reserves an item of 103 million euros to go looking for new projects of this type and give them facilities to settle in Catalonia.
A single window will also be created to raise awareness, accompany and advise the industry in its digital transformation and, among other things, a line of aid will be set up for high-risk investment projects in R+D+I.
A pact resulting from consensus
Although the ‘minister’ Torrent aspired to close his industrial strategy in four months, the talks have ended up lasting more than nine but have concluded with a transversal consensus. Both between the Government and the social agents – whose relations they recognize are not going through their best moment – and between the political groups represented by the Parliament. The two employers’ associations are signatories of the National Pact –Workforce Development Y Pimec– and the two unions –CCOO Y UGT– most representative of Catalonia, as well as the entire parliamentary arc with the exception of vox.