Lluís Juncà Pujol works intensely to promote the competitiveness of Catalonia and consolidate Barcelona as a leading international business center. From his position as general director of Economic Promotion, Competition and Regulation of the Generalitat, he constantly devises new formulas to incentivize the growth of Catalan companies and also actively participates in the process of identifying strategic and transformative projects eligible to receive the multi-million dollar reconstruction funds from the European Union.
The high-ranking official of the Department of the Vice-presidency and of Economy and Finance announced a few weeks ago the creation of a public-private investment fund to offer a new source of financing to companies with growth projects; he recently promoted the agreement to implement a hub for fintech companies in the Barcelona Stock Exchange building, and now launches a business mentoring program aimed at promoting the competitiveness of SMEs and fostering the collaborative economy in Catalonia.
[subscribe_newsletter_esp]
"We are convinced that mentoring is a fundamental business tool to emerge from the crisis and to have a solvent, resilient and strengthened business system in the long term," says Juncà in an interview with The New Barcelona Post.
According to the general director of Economic Promotion, "95% of companies in Catalonia have fewer than ten employees: they are SMEs that live on the edge in every sense, have few resources and little time, and that is why we believe they need mentoring to be able to make better long-term decisions."
In Catalonia, there are currently about 2,000 companies that have a mentor, that is, a professional with accredited experience in a certain field who accompanies and advises them completely free of charge, since the main characteristic of mentoring is that it is done by volunteers. These are people who have time and a lot of knowledge that they want to put at the service of the economic fabric, that is, to give back to society. They are usually retired entrepreneurs or executives or those who have sold their business, successful executives in practice, and also serial entrepreneurs or business school professors. "Mentoring is a reciprocal philosophy. Not only does the mentored person win, the mentor also enriches and learns," says Juncà.
Objective: to go from 2,000 to 20,000 mentored companies
"Having 2,000 mentored companies is a paltry figure, we have more than half a million SMEs!" exclaims Juncà. The Department of Economy has set itself the goal of multiplying this figure by at least ten thanks to the campaign that is now beginning, that is, it wants mentoring to reach at least 20,000 companies. "The challenge is to make mentoring an intrinsically linked tool to the way of doing business in Catalonia," he highlights.
The action initiated by the Generalitat does not consist of launching its own mentoring program ---it already does so through Acció---, but the idea is to create an umbrella structure that brings together and disseminates all the mentoring projects that already exist in Catalonia and also contribute to their financing. Among the entities that have mentoring programs are Acció, Barcelona Activa, Netmentora, Secot and the Federation of Cooperatives.
"Our role will be to bring together those who are already doing mentoring; what we want is to help them communicate to companies that this resource exists with an institutional campaign and a website that will explain what mentoring is and who does it," says Juncà. According to the general director, in 2021, in a second phase, they will provide public funding to these entities so that they can scale their services and adapt them to the increase in demand that occurs thanks to this initiative.
Successful countries are those that collaborate and mentoring is about collaboratingJuncà emphasizes that popularizing mentoring in Catalonia will not only be good for strengthening SMEs, but for the country as a whole. "Successful countries are those that collaborate and the mentoringit's about collaborating. If we, as an Administration, can take a step forward so that we become a country where collaborating is more common than competing among ourselves, I believe we will have done a great service for our competitiveness. Collaboration is one of the pillars of the economy of any modern country," he asserts.
Regarding the agreement with Barcelona Tech City to locate a fintech specialized center in the Barcelona Stock Exchange building, Lluís Juncà anticipates that one of the Generalitat's objectives is to ensure that the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) establishes in the Catalan capital the sandbox or test bed that will serve to regulate new technology companies in the financial sector.
According to the general director, this proposal to locate the sandbox in the stock exchange building, where the CNMV already has offices, has already been made, but for now nothing has been finalized. "We believe it is an opportunity for Barcelona, but formally we have not yet made progress on this issue," he explains.
"Barcelona can aspire to be important as it had never been before in the financial world thanks to the technological ecosystem that has been created in the city and the decentralization process of finance. Today it is technology that leads financial transformation and, therefore, it is no longer as relevant as before to be in Madrid near the Bank of Spain; it is more important to be near a good hub of technological innovation," he reflects.
Barcelona can aspire to be important as it had never been before in the financial world thanks to the technological ecosystemTo succeed in creating a good ecosystemfintechin the Catalan capital it will also be necessary to have "an administration that is friendly to financial innovation." "Here ---Juncà admits--- we have homework:the real challenge is how to modernize the financial management of the Generalitat so that Catalonia can be a good testing ground for fintech.
New investment fund of up to 1 billion
The Department of the Vice-Presidency and Economy awarded Deloitte a contract a few weeks ago to design the new public-private investment vehicle that aims to "raise up to 1 billion euros" to finance the growth projects of Catalan companies. This is an alternative source to banking and venture capital funds that seeks to fill a market gap that the Generalitat believes currently exists. In addition, it is also promoted with the aim of curbing "the delocalization of decisions that occurs when companies have to seek financing outside of Catalonia."
The Government will provide 50% of the capital, with an initial contribution of 100 million euros, although the challenge would be to reach 500 million. The other half is intended to be contributions from the private sector, that is, between one hundred and 400 million more from financial institutions, investment funds, and international investors.
This instrument will allow us to favor merger processes between Catalan companies"Deloitte will give us a first proposal of what this vehicle should be like before the end of the year; we are increasingly convinced that it has been a very correct decision to promote this fund, because we have received many expressions of interest from companies that want to grow and that ask us to know under what conditions they will be able to access these funds," explains Juncà.
"The objective of the fund is that the companies we help maintain their roots in Catalonia," states the senior official of the Government, who also highlights the challenge of promoting merger projects between companies to make them stronger and more competitive. "This instrument will allow us to provide institutional support, favor these merger processes, we can be the catalysts," he adds.
The Generalitat aspires for 30,000 million euros from European reconstruction funds to reach Catalonia. According to Lluís Juncà, for the first time, Catalonia can plan big, that is, make a change of mindset, because now there will not be a problem of resources. "The big problem we will have from 2021 is not the lack of money, but how to invest the money at the speed that the European Commission asks of us. The volume of aid is so large that the main threat is not being able to go so fast. We have to change the mental chip that we lack money and present projects as large as possible. The only thing we will not lack is money; we will lack skills to manage it and have agile administrations in granting permits," he advances.
We have to change the mental chip that we lack money and present projects as large as possibleIn Catalonia, more than 500 projects susceptible to receiving funds from the NextGenerationEU program have already been identified, but of these, about twenty will be projects with a truly transformative capacity for the Catalan economy and will be cataloged as PERTE (Strategic Projects for Economic Recovery and Transformation), the legal figure that the State has created to channel this part of the most strategic European funds.
European funds to create a chip design industry
To select these 20 Catalan PERTEs, the Generalitat created an expert committee that has already entered the final stretch of its work, which it will deliver before the end of the year. "This committee must help us identify these large projects, but the Govern decides which proposals will finally be presented to the State," clarifies Juncà. "Likewise, the European Union really decides which projects will receive funds and will do so based on the initiatives that the State presents to it. What we aspire to is that in the list of Spanish projects that Madrid sends to Brussels, there are as many Catalan ones as possible."
One of the PERTEs that the Generalitat plans to present aims to create in Catalonia a chip prototyping and design industry that will be a leader in Europe within ten years, taking advantage of the great asset we have in the MareNostrum supercomputer. "It is a clear project, with consensus for everyone, because it meets all the requirements a PERTE should have: it is new and takes advantage of something unique in the territory like the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). This initiative will surely be part of the list because it is the paradigm of a transformative project," concludes Juncà.
Add The New Barcelona Post as your preferred Google source for free
Stay informed with the latest news.
