José Luis García-Palacios Álvarez re-elected president of the FOE

2023-04-21 18:01:15

José Luis García-Palacios Álvarez has been unanimously re-elected today as president of the FOE for the next four years during an Electoral Assembly that voted for the candidate by acclamation and in which the organization’s board of directors was renewed. Likewise, the Gold Distinctions were awarded to Joaquín Lucena, Javier Mateo and Manuel Rubio and the Activities Report corresponding to the year 2022 was approved, while Lorenzo Sevillano, an employee of the FOE who already enjoys a well-deserved retirement, was honored.

“I assume the responsibility – José Luis García-Palacios Álvarez began his speech – in this new mandate to keep alive the founding spirit of our organization and to promote cooperation, in order to strengthen, even more if possible, our effectiveness in the defense of business interests and in the permanent demand for the improvements that the province and its economic sectors need to be able to compete on equal terms with other companies and other economies in our environment”.

Regarding his proposals and actions for the period 2023-2027, he alluded to the “defense of the market economy and the role of the company in that system as a determining factor for economic development. “We must be vigilant -he added- before any temptation, whether coming from the public or private spheres, to monopolize economic and business relations, which should not be an obstacle so that, from freedom, we participate in the promotion of initiatives tending to promote cooperation between companies in our province with the aim of improving their results accounts and, therefore, contribute to increasing the Gross Added Value of Huelva”.

Secondly, and consubstantial with the previous principle, it focused on “the independence of our institutions with respect to political powers or groups of a non-business nature. Business organizations do not stand in the elections, and, therefore, we neither win nor lose them, we transcend party structures.”

“We work -he explained- in the political environment, but we must not deviate from our institutional role, and, in the exercise of our task, we can coincide or not with public managers, without this meaning that as an institution we share any ideology with our interlocutors”.

Promoting an environment conducive to the activity of SMEs and the self-employed was another of the approaches of the recently re-elected president of the FOE for whom “the promotion of productive activity, the creation of new companies and the growth and development of existing ones It is today, for today, the best guarantee for employment and for social protection systems if, in addition, we want to converge with our partners in the European Union”.

An attention that will also be directed, according to García-Palacios Álvarez, “towards human capital that acquires increasing value as a differential element that can determine the final competitiveness of companies that requires a qualified population from the training point of view that will be a element of the first order. Working on improving the training capacity of employers and workers will continue to be the preferred objective of our Foundation for the Promotion and Business Guidance (FOE Foundation) so that through its training activities we can gradually adapt workers and entrepreneurs to the changing technological, social and economic reality”.

The president of the FOE also claimed to promote the entrepreneurial mentality in society¨. “Any investment initiative -he said- that arrives outside our border has to be especially welcome, which means that Huelva society and all of us who are part of it are aware that from our province, from our city, we have to give positive messages, a question which today is much more important considering that through the Internet any citizen in any corner of the world knows what is happening in the Antipodes. And we have to say that, on more occasions than necessary, the political confrontation, in some cases, and the desire for notoriety of some groups, in others, the only thing that projects is a negative image of Huelva”.

“The company needs a competitive environment to break through in the market and on this matter I will also focus my objective of action. Competitiveness begins by being an attitude, which is based on public managers understanding that the company is the axis of development”.

INDUSTRIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

And in this chapter, he referred to “achieving an ‘industrial consciousness’, the spirit that characterizes the most advanced societies. Achieving a greater weight of our industry is key to ensuring the resilience of the production model and quality employment and a boost to new trends hand in hand with innovation, sustainability and digitization”.

Regarding infrastructures, he warned that “having a modern network of infrastructures and basic services stands as a first-order factor of competitiveness and will also mark our action program.”

“If -he explained- it is essential for any territory to have a wide infrastructure network, in the case of Huelva it is essential to achieve the objective of a modern province with a sufficiently competitive fabric and with the capacity to open our borders.

GOLD AWARDS

This same meeting served to honor qualified businessmen who received the Organization’s highest award, its Gold Distinction, which went to Javier Mateo, president of the Association of Construction Entrepreneurs (AECO) and FOE accountant. ; Joaquín Lucena, treasurer and member of the Executive Committee of the FOE and Manuel Rubio, former president of AJE-Huelva and Treasurer of the FOE Foundation. All of them were recognized in the category ‘For their contribution to Business Organizations’.