The Cambra de Comerç de Barcelona forecasts a 2% increase in investment for this year at a Catalan level, taking into account both investment in the construction sector and productive investment. It foresees this after a 2023 that registered an increase in public works tenders, partly linked to the European Next Generation funds. Thus, the Cambra trusts that 2024 will be the year in which the impact of these funds in Catalunya will be most perceived.
"We hope that this will be the year in which this execution accelerates," proclaimed the president of the Cambra, Josep Santacreu. The organization foresees this 2% increase in investment after a 2023 in which it increased by 0.7%, in a situation marked by the tightening of financing conditions. In a report on the Catalan economic situation, the Cambra concludes that investment has stagnated in the construction sector, while productive investment has decreased due to the increase in interest rates.
This productive investment encompasses aspects that increase the productivity of companies, whether elements such as machinery and equipment as well as intangibles, such as intellectual property. The organization also emphasizes that productive investment per employed person, which is linked to GDP per employed citizen, is advancing in Catalunya at a slower pace than in other European countries. "And this dynamic must be reversed," the president of the Cambra stated.
The entity places investment as a driver for Catalunya's economic growth in 2024, which it expects to be 1.8%"The Next Generation funds are an opportunity to do so", has added, and has highlighted that there is a temporal mismatch between the mobilization of these funds and their execution. This is reflected in the increase in public tenders, which have gone from 3,142 million euros in 2022 to 3,896 million in 2023, taking into account both investment in building and civil works.
In this context, the mobilization of the Next Generation through the state Recovery and Resilience mechanism "has not yet accelerated investment in Catalonia," according to the director of the Chamber's Studies Office, Joan Ramon Rovira. Why? Either due to the temporal mismatch between the mobilization of funds and their execution, or because these funds have replaced investments that companies already planned to make, or because they have been used to compensate for the impact of interest rates, Rovira detailed, who is confident that the impact of these European funds will become palpable this year.
The 2% increase in investment in Catalonia predicted by the Chamber is part of the corporation's forecast, which predicts a 1.8% growth in the Catalan economy in 2024. The organization predicts that it will be a year that will begin with a decrease in economic indicators and then rebound, as interest rates change and depending on the geopolitical situation. As drivers of this 1.8% growth for 2024, the Chamber's report places public investment, along with private consumption.
Also, the area of exports will be a driver of the Catalan economy this year; they will increase by 3% compared to 2023, despite doing so in a context of moderation in their growth. Tourism is also a sector with "the wind at its back," and in the fourth quarter of 2023 it managed to recover another pre-pandemic variable: overnight stays by foreign tourists were already above those of 2019, something that had already occurred previously with domestic visitors, according to Rovira.
The director of the Studies Office guaranteed that, as inflation eases, the economy will evolve positively. However, there are risks, reflected by data such as the increase in food prices and maritime container transport, due to the crisis in the Red Sea. Santacreu included the drought as one of the elements that will condition this inflation, and called for promoting structural and multifactorial measures to guarantee the supply of drinking water in the future: "We have acted on a drought-by-drought basis and, when it has passed, we have deprioritized it again."
In this regard, Santacreu has announced that the Cambra has created a working group on drought. The president of the organization, who took office in October, explained that the entity has modified the so-called silver chairs, which allow companies to enter the corporation's plenary session in exchange for a financial contribution. The team of his predecessor, Mònica Roca, modified them to go from 14 seats for 75,000 euros to two for 125,000, which are currently vacant. Now, Santacreu's board has again reduced the amount to 75,000, although it maintains the only two seats, due to the impossibility of expanding them until four years have passed since the previous decision. In December, the Cambra opened a call to occupy these two seats, for which it received no applications. Now, it will ask the Generalitat to reopen this process, in which there are interested companies, according to Santacreu.
The Cambra estimates that the 15% tax on multinationals will mean an extra 475 million for Catalonia and proposes allocating them to investmentThe president of the Chamber has also valued the 15% minimum rate in corporate tax for large multinationals, which "aims to put an end to the downward, unfair and dangerous tax competition between countries that seek to attract investments and companies with a tax treatment that does not correspond." Santacreu, who recalled that this is a European provision that must be adapted in Spain, has maintained that this fiscal measure will represent 475 million euros for Catalonia, that proposes to allocate to reduce certain taxes or, precisely, to increase the investments carried out in Catalonia.