The president of Telefónica, José María Álvarez-Pallete, participates in Davos in the World Economic Forum (WEF, for its acronym in English), the first in person after two years of interruption due to the pandemic. After participating in a roundtable discussion on the role of digitization in the goal of decarbonisation and zero emissions, Álvarez-Pallete held a brief meeting with a group of Spanish journalists, on the same day that the Council of Ministers approved a aid plan for 12,250 million euros to attract investment in microchips in Spain.
-How is this Davos summit going?
-Very intense, as always in Davos, but it is a very special Davos. For the first time after two years we met physically, and in the last six years there has been a Brexit, a pandemic and a war in Ukraine. It is a Davos where a lot of unexpected things have happened and there are a lot of questions and we are all looking for answers about what all these things may mean in the future.
-Do you share the optimism in the Spanish economy expressed by the President of the Government in Davos?
-We see that after the pandemic and confinement, there is a rebound in the economy. We see it through telecommunications networks. Data traffic grows 50% year on year throughout Europe and, of course, in Spain. It will be necessary to see what are the impacts that what is happening in Ukraine will have on inflation, interest rates, the value chain, on logistics… we will have to monitor it, but yes, if you ask me if there is an economic rebound, there is.
-The President of the Government has come to Davos with the aim of attracting investment in microchips. Does Spain arrive on time for this race or is it lagging behind?
–Laggards? Not necessarily. Let me explain: what happened during the confinement and later with the war in Ukraine puts the value chain, globalization as we have conceived it until now, in question. The relocation of the production of the most strategic goods, such as semiconductors, is the issue now. This relocation will not take place in a few months, it will take place in a couple of years. So I think that we are in time to create conditions to bring investments to Europe and Spain.
-Do you perceive an appetite in the technological giants to invest in Spain?
-Here I always talk about mine: Spain has the best fiber and telecommunications network in Europe. And in that sense we have fundamental assets to put on the table to bring in investments.
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-Does Telefónica plan to participate in the Perte of the microchips that the Government has approved?
I don’t know, we’ll have to see the conditions. What I do know is that any investor who wants to come to our country has the best telecommunications structure at their disposal, both in fiber and in 5G.