Because there Business who relocate their headquarters from lleida to the neighbor Aragon or other territories? This is the question to which the Government has been forced to seek answers by a Parliamentary motion on the relocation of companies from the Lleida counties. To do this, the Ministry of Economy has taken as a starting point a work prepared by the Chamber and the Diputació de Lleidaas well as the university of the city and the Barcelona School of Management from the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF). And, contrary to popular belief, it is not a question of taxation or fiscal pressure.
During the period between 2015 and 2020a total of 428 companies, 3.2% of the total in that area, moved their headquarters or facilities to other territories. In any case, there were also incorporations during the same period, with which the net balance was a total of 87 losses.
To Barcelona, Aragon and Madrid
Of the total number of companies that have left Lleida, 39.4% have moved to Barcelona for the benefits of the capital, such as infrastructure or growth opportunities; 18.9% to Aragon, for administrative agility and land availability, especially Fraga, Binéfar or Monzón and sectors such as agriculture, livestock and fishing; and 14% have gone to Madrid, due to tax incentives and subsidies. According to Pimec, the number of companies has grown in Aragon by 8% in 15 years while in Lleida it has only grown by 2%.
The authors of the study warn that Lleida is in danger of becoming in the middle of two very powerful logistics ‘hubs’: Zaragoza, with the Central Corridor and Barcelona, with the Mediterranean Corridor, “which could further aggravate the problem of company relocation”. And they propose solutions such as improving infrastructures, achieving a connection with the railway corridors and giving new uses for the Lleida-Alguaire airport; favor administrative agility, through a “single window” of attention to the entrepreneur; create an investment attraction pole, with polygons specialized in the agri-food sector Y promote collaboration between university and business. The ‘conseller’ of Economy, James Giroduring a visit to the area, was convinced that the construction of new industrial estates in the province will serve to stop the flight of companies.
An example of offshoring is Battle seeds, a benchmark in production for large crops and for orchards and gardens at home, which finally chose to locate a factory in Torrente del Cinca with an investment of 10 million euros and that will employ 80 people. And this is attributed to the ease and speed that Aragón offers in administrative matters, and also to find land. For similar reasons, the agricultural machinery company from Lleida Niubo decided in 2017 to bet on Fraga as the ideal place to grow.
No subsidies, no taxes, no land
The study highlights that “the first element that must be pointed out is that the research has not found an important specific weight of three elements that in the collective imagination are usually associated with the relocation of companies: subsidies, taxes and land prices“. Moreover, despite the fact that Catalonia has a greater number of its own taxes and a greater volume of collection, in terms of fiscal pressure (collection over GDP) it is in fifth position, “at levels close to those of Aragon”.
Related news
And if the comparison is made in per capita terms, “it is evident that in 2020 Catalonia is also in fifth position, slightly above Aragon. In short, “there is no significant difference in the level of taxation in both territories“. The authors affirm that “it is true that Catalonia has more taxes of its own than Aragon, but these are hardly a determining factor in relocation both because of the reduced tax burden they entail, since their objective is more to raise awareness among economic agents than to collection nature, as well as because they affect very specific sectors that are difficult to relocate”.
Surveys of companies that have moved give clearer clues as to why. 90% were micro-enterprises and they justified it by “family reasons, proximity to customers and competitors and synergies and savings with other companies“. In the case of SMEs, which were 10% of all those who chose to change their headquarters, the main reasons were “the bureaucracy, the attitude of the authorities and the land connections“.