The Board of Directors of the Food Industry Association of Castilla y León, Vitartis , which met yesterday, June 21, at the headquarters of the Congress of Deputies, in Madrid, analyzed the current economic and political environment and has asked the candidates who are elected on July 23 "to commit decisively to stability, the result of understanding and for the benefit of the common good."
According to Pedro Ruiz, president of Vitartis, the Board of Directors discussed the situation of the food industry, the same topic that was the focus of the meeting held with the top officials of the Federation of the Food and Beverage Industry (Fiab), an entity with which Vitartis has maintained a collaboration agreement since 2017.
In both meetings, José Luis Sánchez, Deputy Director of Aljomar, also participated as Vice President of the organization and representative of one of the leading food companies in the Community.
A new stage
“Our public representatives, undoubtedly committed to social and economic progress, know very well that business activity is the main engine of progress and that public-private collaboration has yielded extraordinary results in recent decades,” said the president of Vitartis.
In this sense, both in Castile and León and in the rest of Spain, "the food industry needs to continue growing to generate more employment in rural areas, especially in the areas most affected by depopulation."
The food industry, he added, “which is the most dynamic sector and committed to the land on which it is based, needs to operate in a stable and safe environment to continue working responsibly and for everyone.”
Therefore, he said, “it is necessary to leave behind the excessive regulatory zeal that has plunged the activity of the agri-food sector into a veritable regulatory labyrinth, with too many elements that are very difficult to interpret, which complicate the activity, make it more expensive and put the legal certainty of the food industries at risk.”
Business margins
The president of Vitartis stated that, in a new framework of stability and understanding, it would be necessary to "reduce the pressure of such a suffocating tax system as the one we currently suffer, as well as to leave behind the repeated recourse by members of the Government to the disqualification of business activity, extending suspicion about an alleged indecent and selfish action, at the very least, taking advantage of this inflationary period to increase business margins."
He noted, in this regard, that companies' gross margins recovered to pre-pandemic levels (40%) in 2022, while net margins remained 1.5 percentage points lower, according to reports from the Bank of Spain. At the same time, tax revenue for the central government increased by 15% in 2021 and 2022; that is, a cumulative increase of almost €60 billion.
