Antoni Cañete: “We will seize the engine without new financing”

The new financing for Catalonia that has to be negotiated this term has fully entered the business debate. The president of Pimec, Antoni Cañete (Barcelona, ??1963), warns that the future of Catalonia as an economic engine depends on the resources that reach the community. Meanwhile, he also wants to fight against absenteeism, since it is in Catalonia where the percentage of workers on medical leave is the highest in the entire European Union.

What consequences does it have?

It is an element of competitiveness and productivity. We have to put it on the table in a calm way to find out what the situation is and how we can improve. That is why we have started a survey in all companies to see what the elements of this increase in absenteeism are.

But in the end the discharge is given by a doctor.

We do not question that. What we do say or what we do analyze is the fact: we are the second community in all of Spain that has the highest percentage of sick leave after Navarra. We have to analyze what are the causes that could cause us to have 4.7% absenteeism and Extremadura with 1.9%. It’s too big a difference. And that we are leaders in Europe.

The fact that absenteeism has doubled in Catalonia comes in parallel with the increase in unfilled vacancies.

The main problem that companies have today is finding labor, which is quite complicated to explain with unemployment rates of 12% in Spain or 9% in Catalonia. We are doing something wrong.

That?

In Catalonia, 4,000 million euros are spent on active policies and passive policies. But of these 4 billion, 83% is spent on passive policies. On the other hand, on active policies, which are what we defend, we spend 17%.

The Audit Office has just severely criticized the management of the Catalan Employment Service (SOC) because it did not implement the funds.

We have a supply system when we really should have a demand system. The SOC would have to be the one that provides the necessary training to the demand. All the resources we have are few to be able to adjust to demand.

But the SOC still does not know what money it can have, because there are no budgets from the Generalitat.

Beyond budgets, the real debate that our society should begin is the financing debate. We have an absolutely structural problem.

What is Pimec’s position?

We propose that a distribution of resources would have to be made to generate economic activity and jobs. We are missing a great opportunity. From Catalonia we are paying 19.2% of the GDP, which are the contributions we make, and we are receiving 13.6%. If Catalonia is the third community that contributes, when it receives it is the tenth. And if we add the cost of living, it would become 14th out of 15.

And how does it affect companies?

We have to start the debate on financing to be able to drive our economy and above all we also have to make decisions when managing our resources, to be able to optimize them from the point of view of responding to needs.

Give an example.

The decision made by the Generalitat to reduce one teaching hour with teachers, which meant going from 19 hours to 18 hours in secondary school or from 24 to 23 in primary school. It has meant increasing the system with 3,556 more teachers. This means that chapter 1 of the budgets has increased by 170 million. In addition, our interest expenses have increased by almost 600 million. And we also add that in recent years we have had 60% of the execution of the infrastructures committed, when other communities are on average around 80% and in some they are systematically above 100%.

It’s not good data.

In Catalonia, if we do not face the financing debate together with Spain, in the short and medium term we will be losing a fundamental issue of our economy. And therefore, instead of being the engine of the economy, we will seize this engine and, therefore, we will not be able to redistribute resources.

And don’t you think that before asking for more money from the State, it would be necessary to define what it will be spent on in Catalonia with the approval of the Generalitat’s budgets?

Absolutely. The social and economic agents have been working, precisely, on this predistribution of resources, precisely in this direction, with an agreement with the Government, in which we are precisely placing emphasis in this sense. The big problem we have is that the resources I have for innovation are scarce, those I have for internationalization of my companies are scarce and, therefore, I am losing a whole series of activities that could make this moment of change an opportunity. .

Almost a month and a half after that photo you took at the Palau de la Generalitat with the rest of the social agents for the budgets, they still have not been approved. Do they feel used?

We, the social agents, neither approve nor disapprove the budgets, because we do not form majorities.

Of the last 15 years, only a third have budgets been approved on time. Why is there so little culture of political pact in Catalonia?

We need maturity from the point of view of general interests in a series of political commitments, in the issues in which the present and future of this country are at stake. For example, in the case of training. Another of the important pacts would be on the issue of energy or on the issue of water, because since 2008 we have been making proposals that have not been fulfilled by the governments before.

Has there been a neglect of functions in water management?

There has not only been a loss of functions, but this lack of setting country priorities has been occurring. Drought is not a specific issue that is happening to us now. It happened to us in 2008. But we will not solve the great problem of drought today. Today we have to get to work for when the next situation comes.

Do you think that successive governments after the 2008 drought have been too busy with the national issue?

I don’t believe it.

So what is the problem?

It is an excess of bureaucracy. For example, in the case of electrical installations, companies have not left for another territory due to political problems. They leave because it is a problem that a license here can take two and a half years and in the community next door you can have it in six months.

And what consequences does it have?

In the last 10 years, Lleida has grown 4% in the number of companies. Aragon has grown twice as much.

Even you have gone to Madrid.

No.

They have opened a delegation there.

What we have done is expand our activity in the representation in Madrid. 90% of the laws that become part of the Congress of Deputies in Madrid. Not being present in the place where the decisions that later affect us as businessmen and women are made would be a big mistake.