The Aragonese economy and the Spanish economy have maintained a positive behavior in the second quarter of the year, confirming the data already closed for the first three months of 2024, in which the Aragonese GDP grew by 0.5% and the national GDP did so. 0.7%. This is due to evolution Not only for the good performance of industry, but also for the service sector and the construction sector, especially for the remarkable pace of the overseas sector. It was able to return to positive coverage ratios and posted 7% growth while overseas sales declined in the country as a whole.
This Thursday, CEOEE Aragón’s economic situation commission, after examining advanced indicators of activity and the labor market, revealed the expectation that new perspectives will allow for a decrease in interest rates. Entrepreneurs are regaining confidence to increase investments, especially in service goods.
But not everything is positive. CEO Félix Langas, President of Aragon’s Economic Situation Commission, explained that the business organization. He is particularly concerned about the continuing decline of institutions and the self-employed in society. Overall an indicator that behaves very differently in Spain. “There are 2,700 fewer self-employed workers in Aragon since the start of the pandemic, but there are 119,000 people in the country as a whole,” Langes insisted, he also lamented. Society has not yet recovered the number of institutions it had before the health crisis.
One of the reasons explaining this situation, according to a representative of CEOE Aragón, Difficulty in the continuity of these businesses, most of them in the service sector, “Because there is no one to collect the inheritance money, transfers are probably unaffordable and these sectors are not attractive enough due to the availability and commitment of the businessman.”
Although longas It assessed the stability of inflation and particularly core inflation, recognized that the Aragonese business community wanted “this to be confirmed and to have a long stability over time”. Because, according to the head of the Economic Situation Commission, there are still Energy costs and some raw materials fluctuate a lot. Special emphasis is given to “two confounding factors”. One of them is logistical costs, especially due to the increase in sea traffic from Asia and the Houthi attacks, which have forced it to look for an alternative route through Africa to avoid the Suez Canal. But there’s also concern about rising labor costs, which, according to Langas, employers can’t afford to pass up and cause them to lose competitiveness.
Roberto Bermudez de Castro, Minister of Finance of the Government of Aragon, participated in the commission’s meeting, before which businessmen The fiscal changes in the regional taxes of the Government of Aragon are described positivelyBut they told him that there should not be too many differences between communities, that “we all play by the same rules” and that “there is still room for improvement”.
The automobile and the pig
During the meeting, companies were “expectant” about the possible impact on the pork industry of a Chinese reaction to EU tariffs on electric vehicles from Asian companies. Longs, how remarkable it is The Aragonese sector is already looking for new market places, hoping that “all this will have no effect”.
While he “agreed with the tariffs”, he stressed that “they should be defined at the right time”. An economy cannot be sustained by taxing everything that comes in from outside.“. For this reason, he insisted that “we must work together”, not only in relation to the electric car, but also in “all technology” and argued that “battery and component factories should come soon”. “Now we must import, because for the representative of CEOE Aragón .” “We’ve been talking about it for a long time, but we haven’t confirmed it yet.”
