Economy admits that the Government's plan for EU funds has generated frustration for companies
Madrid
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The Secretary of State for the Economy and the main person in charge of the Government in terms of company support policies, Gonzalo Garcia Andresadmitted this Wednesday during a conference at the Dialogues for Democracy Club that the model chosen by the Government to select the projects in which the bulk of European funds will be invested “It has generated frustration in companies” and has underlined that the Ministry continues to see collaboration with private companies as essential to meet the objectives set out in the Recovery Plan.
Nadia Calviño's number two has explained that the
'expressions of interest' scheme launched by the Executive, by virtue of which the companies have entrusted to the ministries the investment projects that they could develop in each of the branches of action defined by the Government within the Recovery Plan and in which the government authorities to define the calls, has generated many companies the mistaken feeling that it already gave them access to European aid when it was not like that and that, he says, has generated frustration.
Within the framework of these processes, the Government has received thousands and thousands of project proposals, the vast majority of which will not have a place in the investments of the Recovery Plan, since the funds allocated to each of the lever policies, as defined the Executive, are limited and not all of them are going to be executed by the private sector. In fact, a good part of these resources are going to be executed from the public sphere, from its network of commercial companies, autonomous organizations and other entities.
The business world has already warned that this could happen. One of the elements that caused the most reservations in the business fabric of the process of configuring the great sectoral strategic projects of the Recovery Plan, the famous Perte, was having to reveal to the Government projects that in many cases were already underway without knowing certainty if they would finally obtain the backing of European funds and within the framework of a process in which their competitors also participated. While in the field of small businesses, what was questioned is that it be forced to design investment projects, with the economic cost that this entails, without being certain about whether or not their development would be included in the government plan.
The Secretary of State for the Economy has relativized the alleged problems with the implementation of the Recovery Plan. He has reiterated the government story that the Government has authorized 22,000 of the 24,000 million provided for in the 2021 Budgets, although the reality is that it has only issued calls for less than half of that amount, and has ensured that in the first half of this year there will be calls for more than 22,000 million euros. “The important thing is to invest well. Most of the structural problems of economies come from errors in investment processes and we cannot let this opportunity pass by », he said.
García Andrés has defined the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan launched by the Government as the most ambitious reform plan faced by Spain "in recent decades" and it has related it in terms of its transforming power with the economy with the great milestones of the country in economic matters of the last century such as the Stabilization Plan of 1959, the entry of Spain into the then called European Economic Community in 1986 or the entry in the Europe of the euro.
