The president of the Confederation of Business Associations of the Balearic Islands (CAEB), Carmen Planas, and Gerardo Cuerva, president of CEPYME and vice president of CEOE, have delivered the Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2019 to Francisco Vidal, president of Grupo Autovidal, during the 'Entrepreneur Gala' held at the Castell de Bellver in Palma, before more than five hundred guests and in presence of the main representatives of the Balearic society.
In a lively speech, the president of CAEB has started by saying: "I want to share with all of you a concern that, I confess, comes from my heart and makes me sad, because Balears is losing welfare and has been doing it for 20 years" .
Planas has supported his argument in the book "Why countries fail. The origins of power, prosperity and poverty ", work of the prestigious economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, who analyze why neighboring countries, or neighboring regions, that have similar conditions, present wide differences in terms of economic development and well-being , coinciding both authors in pointing out that "the cause is in the policies dictated by the institutions of each country or of each region".
The president of CAEB, in this line, explained that "20 years ago we were on the podium of the Spanish regions, but we have been losing positions because of the policies we have been implementing for two decades."
Therefore, "Balears will not reach greater levels of prosperity until it has the right policies and I sincerely believe that the time has come to change public and private policies. We can not continue choosing those problems that seem more pressing, more urgent and easier to solve in the short term and continue systematically relegating the most important is the loss of welfare. A problem that we have not addressed for 20 years. "
"It is not enough to affirm before the lack of housing, that we will do more for the next four years or that we will install housing for rent, although later we will do it, or not. It is not enough to say, in front of our young people that they leave their studies prematurely, that we will put in free enrollments or that we will expand the educational offer. It is not enough to tell our traditional industries that they are about to close, that we will support them in fairs or we will subsidize the purchase of machinery. It is not enough to tell our young university students that they do not find a job that suits their professional profile, that we will incorporate them into the administration or help them to start their own business, though, carrying a huge backpack of rules and difficulties on their backs. It is not enough to tell the resident, in the face of congestion problems, that we will invent trolleys, or we will propose to go by bicycle or we will articulate a shuttle bus network, because all that is just patches ", lamented the president of CAEB.
"And what we need are not patches, but an integral solution that solves the root of all our problems at once", added Planas, assuring that "the time has come for all institutions to assume the urgent responsibility of boosting the productivity of all the factors of production that we use in our companies, departments and institutions. Because productivity is the element that makes some regions more prosperous than others. "
Planas has defended that "the only way to increase the efficiency of the economy, is from institutional reforms, ambitious reforms, reforms with capital letters".
Planas: "The big problem is the alarming low productivity we experience in the Balearics at all levels"
Based on the data of the Impulsa Foundation, Planas pointed out that "as important as the low competitive position of the Balearic Islands, is the set of arguments that explain it, because they discover the real problems that we have in pillars as important as higher education, innovation, business sophistication and the quality of our institutions, where we are, by the way, below the Spanish average ".
Planas has insisted that "in addition to the low ratings that Balears shows today in all these indexes, the worrying thing, the truly worrying my dear friends, is that for too many years we have been getting worse in a tendential way, and, especially, in matter institutional where the increasingly high and complex taxes, joins the ineffective bureaucracy that explains that certain procedures require more time and are more expensive than the average of the regions with which we compete, and I mean the obtaining of permits for the building, the procedures to start a business, to get electricity, to obtain credit or to register the property …
"The administrations have to function and facilitate the economy to work for our society to prosper," said the president of CAEB.
"Now we need to act accordingly. Add support and forge a leadership, a leadership that has to be shared by the public sector and the private sector, by the government and by the opposition, to place Balears back among the most prosperous regions of Europe ". "It is necessary and also urgent that, under that shared leadership, we join all efforts because today is the time to demand not a government pact, but a pact, a great public-private pact of modernization and productive transformation of the Balearic economy" .
"Let's do it now," the CAEB president has said, "and let's not fall into the error of believing that growth is guaranteed, because it is not, and let's not forget to implement reforms that are perhaps uncomfortable in the shortest term," warned Carmen Planas.
"Establish a reformist strategy instead of continuing to deceive ourselves with a policy of chosen problems and leaving relegated the big problem is the alarming low productivity we experience in the Balearics at all levels," he stressed.
He has also had a message for the business community. "Today, I ask the companies not only tenacity and passion, but vision and creativity to break this status quo. Let us also abandon short-term strategies, often too cost-focused, to grow from digitization, circularity, internationalization, clustering, innovation, sustainability, responsibility. I know that what I ask is difficult but today, there are companies with names that you are doing and you are achieving and a good number of them are here and you are an example to follow ".
Carmen Planas concluded her speech saying that "I had told you that today I wanted to share with all of you a concern that comes from my heart. And believe me, from my heart, I tell you that nothing would make me happier than in 20 years, at this gala of the entrepreneur, the president of CAEB can congratulate everyone, because together we have achieved it. "
The intervention of the president of CAEB has provoked wide approval among the attending public and, especially, among the numerous representatives of business leaders who have traveled to Palma today to attend the Entrepreneur Gala. Among those who stand out the president of CEPYME and vice president of CEOE, Gerardo Cuerva; the vice president of the Foment del Treball, Elisabeth Cañigueral; the president of the management of the Valencian Community and also vice-president of CEOE, Salvador Navarro, and also the president of the businessmen of Murcia, José María Albarracín, organizations that, together with the Balearic Islands, make up the Mediterranean arch.
Also present were the presidents of the Spanish Confederation of Young Entrepreneurs, Fermín Albaladejo, and the National Association of Autonomous Workers, Lorenzo Amor, as well as the president of the ASINCEX engineering association, Juan Merino.
Planas stressed that "I believe that your presence reflects the fruit of the intense work we are doing in CAEB to be the transmission belt between companies in the Balearic Islands and the rest of Spain." He also pointed out that "I also want to tell you, and I do it with pride, that the initiatives that CAEB is developing with the third sector, both in the Balearic Islands and abroad, have been recognized at the national level and, thanks to them, today CAEB holds the chairmanship of the Corporate Social Responsibility Committee of the CEOE. An opportunity to drive major changes in business strategy and enhance the social commitment of companies.
The president of CAEB also congratulated "my great work team, vice presidents of the CAEB, chairmen of the commissions and the more than 80 associations that make up the large employers of the Balearic Islands that is CAEB, as well as my team of direct collaborators , because not for the fact of seeing them almost daily deserve less my personal gratitude.
Planas also had words of thanks for Bankia, for sponsoring again this Gala of the 2019 Entrepreneur, as well as for the entities that have collaborated in the act, specifically mentioning the Barceló Group, the English Court, Sampol, Willis Towers Watson, Asima, Palma City Council, Coca-Cola, Estrella Damm and Cut & Go, "a company, innovative, from here, from Mallorca, whose robots we have seen in the video and which have created the award, the work of Manuel Granero, whom I congratulate your creativity A work born of the purest talent and the most modern technology 'made in Balears' ".
The president of CEPYME and vice president of CEOE, Gerardo Cuerva, highlights that "it is necessary to bet on stability, moderation and legal security"
The president of the Spanish Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises (CEPYME) stressed in his speech that "it is necessary to remind the political representatives at different administrative levels, the need to place, clearly and clearly, companies and , in a very special way, to SMEs in the central axis of economic policies.
Gerardo Cuerva, vice-president of the Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations (CEOE), insisted that "for entrepreneurs to be able to carry out our work, it is necessary to bet on stability, moderation and legal security, as well as an environment favorable for the activity of the companies ".
For this reason, Cuerva has concluded by defending "a framework that, in short, takes into account the needs of companies and does not introduce elements of insecurity that hinder and tax their activity".
Armengol highlights "the role of CAEB to build bridges with administrations and promote consensus to continue creating opportunities and welfare for citizens"
The Acting President of the Balearic Government, which has closed the event, stressed that "CAEB's vocation is with the companies and with the people behind it, but also, as a fundamental actor of civil society, it has a double responsibility with the land in which it is rooted. On the one hand economic, lending a magnificent support to companies of all dimensions and all sectors. And, on the other hand, social, building bridges with the administrations so that together, from a climate of loyalty and consensus, we can promote tools and environments that make your work easier and allow you to continue creating opportunities and welfare for the citizens ".
Francina Armengol pointed out that "as a result of the collective work of companies, unions, institutions, and also workers, we have experienced a legislature of maximum, quantitative and also qualitative growth, in places of work, in indefinite work, in profitability, in salary increases, in rights, in public services, in exports and, also, in low season ".
Francisco Vidal, thanks for the award of the Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2019
Francisco Vidal, president of Grupo Autovidal, thanked the award of the Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2019, stating that "I want and I must share this award with my four children and the 260 employees of Autovidal since without their work, dedication and I would dare to say, love for the company, nor would I be here, nor would Autovidal be what it is today and above all because they are going to have to face the challenges of the future of our sector, the transformation of mobility, which it is predicted to be fascinating in the coming decades and it will put us to the test again, so this award is for those who are now in the day to day of our company, so they do not lose that transforming role that has always been in our DNA, to achieve new forms of productivity that will help us to last and improve our competitiveness and of course, also in gratitude to the thousands of clients who have trusted us throughout these 98 years of activity.
Vidal stressed that "if there are two things that I am proud of as an entrepreneur, first of all I have known how to make the generational change to my four children at the right time, when I thought I was losing strength and creativity and they were winning. And the second, to have been able to instill in my children the values of the business family, which for me is not the same as the family business since this is when the company works for the whole family even if a family member is not integrated into it and the Family Business that is one in which the whole family works in and for the company ".