The Valencian Community has a “great capacity” to attract foreign direct investment, says the Valencian Institute of Economic Research (Ivie). Between July 2022 and June 2023, the territory has attracted 3,323 million euros of international investment, which multiplies by 4.3 that of 2019. “In the first half of 2023 alone it has already attracted more investment than in all of 2022, and that in that year the figure exceeded 2,000 million euros,” noted this morning the deputy director of the Ivie, Joaquín Maudos.
The Ministry of Industry already reported on the good progress of the Valencian economy in attracting investment a few months ago, which in the international investment data for the first half of the year placed the Community in second position in the ranking, only behind Madrid. and overtaking Catalonia.
At the congress, the economist presented, filled with multiple data, the report The evolution of the Valencian economy since the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis, a topic on which the V Valencian Economy Congress held this morning in Castelló de la Plana. The importance of the foreign sector is increasing in the Valencian Community, since the number of Valencian export companies was already higher in 2022 than before the pandemic.
Another conclusion, in this case “worrying” according to the Ivie report, is that the gap between the GDP per capita of the Valencian Community and the average for Spain has widened almost two percentage points since 2019 and now stands at 14 .8% below the national average, compared to 13% before Covid-19.
Although the Community recovered the real GDP before the pandemic in the first quarter of 2023, the greater population growth explains why per capita income has fallen by -4.6% between 2019 and June 2023, which represents a decrease higher than the -2.5% registered for the country as a whole.
Likewise, another of the messages that the Ivie has made clear is that the Valencian Community has a “very important” challenge to face and that is a burden to support regional development policies: its high deficit and public debt. “Without a reform of the regional financing system, it becomes very difficult to guarantee the welfare state and support the productive fabric,” he says.
The day, organized by the Generalitat Valenciana and the Ivie, in collaboration with the Chair of Transformation of the Economic Model of the UJI, was closed by the autonomous secretary of Hacienda and Finance of the Conselleria de Hacienda, Economy and Public Administration, Eusebio Monzó .
