Catalonia returns. The investment plan approved by the Government of Salvador Illa, for 18,500 million euros, marks a milestone. It culminates a triple return of Catalonia. To economic policy, after a decade, circumscribed to the culture of the complaint. To the primacy of the productive economy on the pulse in public financing. And to its historic commitment to compete for Spanish internal leadership, as a lever to improve its European standard.
“Catalunya leaders“It is not a budget, even if it is quantified. Not a multiannual budget program as the EU financial framework (seven years), although it is intended to deploy in a legislature. Not a catalog of works closed in detail, although it includes 200 concrete operations.
It is rather that, an action plan, an investment program that inherits the EU Next generation plan the vocation of recovery of a shock; In that case, sudden but brief paralysis (pandemic); In this, the recoil most distributed in the calendar (the process). And in turn, of relaunching (such as NGEU itself) since the lost time is found in front of other territories in terms of competitiveness.
The priorities are selective: pending infrastructure, adaptation of the productive apparatus at the current time, knowledge and innovation to reach the most advanced; That is, the three areas that cover 89% of the planned financing. The rest, some social expenses and administrative reform. As soon as it includes a catalog of legislative proposals – ”we have already regulated in abundance,” explains the Minister of Economics, Alícia Romero – but a wide use of the administrative and practical coordination of the Autonomous Community.
Like the creation of an operator, Leadernew company to monitor and, where appropriate, make public investments with greater agility. Or that of a financial cluster, aligning the existing public and private ecosystem. Or that of a public capital-risgo fund that facilitates the takeoff of start-upsto increase them by 50%, to 3,000, as well as increase the size of consolidated companies. The measure, perhaps more novel, creating Innofab, which will design and prefabricate semiconductors by turning scientific (photonic) innovations into industrial projects.
That is the tone of the plan: stimulate the productive economy, through public support and public-private collaboration, in addition to recovering infrastructure delay. Especially those that collapse the survival of areas or sectors, and were levers of the first industrialization: water, providing 2,000 million with the generation of new water resources so that they meet 70% of demand; renewable energy, to recover the delay (12,000 new megawatts, to approach 23% European on final consumption, based on the current 10.1%); Communications: sufficient airport, digitalization in all municipalities …
The purpose is to apply orthodox financing to all this, covering more than two thirds of the 18.5 billion planned through the ordinary budget of the Generalitat (even extended) and the rest with credits of the Institut Català de Finances. Ambitious? Reachable.
