2023-10-25 04:15:00
José Manuel Ferreira, businessman and vice president of the Oviedo Chamber of Commerce, highlighted yesterday the need to “exploit” the quality and cost of living in Asturias to retain and attract a qualified workforce, “the main ingredient for economic dynamism and overcome, thus, the demographic challenge”. However, he added that other territories are also competing in fiscal matters and highlighted that this “would be a good third competitive argument to add, which should be valued more based on fiscal intelligence than fiscal ideology,” said Ferreira to fully enter into the hot debate on taxation, revived in recent weeks by the public demonstrations of the Minister of the Treasury defending the fiscal model of the Government of the Principality. “With tax competition between regions, being an entrepreneur in Asturias is not the same as being an entrepreneur in Madrid,” said Eva Roces, CEO of the fuels and metals business group Roces.
José Manuel Ferreira, Eva Roces and Carmen de la Uz, general director of the Uz Group, participated yesterday in the second session of the tenth conference “The Asturias that works”, organized by LA NUEVA ESPAÑA and the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Oviedo with the sponsorship of Unicaja Banco, Asturex, FADE, Femetal, Chamber of Commerce of Oviedo and College of Economists of Asturias. This second session, which once again filled the classroom of the Faculty of Economics and Business, was titled “Chamber of Commerce: we are a company, we propose and we do” and was moderated by Ana Rodríguez Álvarez, director of the Department of Economics of the University of Oviedo, which in its introduction highlighted the role of chambers of commerce in the representation, promotion and defense of the general interests of Asturian companies.
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Proposal and no protest
The three businessmen who participated in the colloquium are members of the executive committee of the Oviedo Chamber of Commerce, a corporation with 134 years of history to which more than 45,000 companies from 69 of the 78 municipalities of Asturias belong. “The nature of the chambers, between the public and the private, makes them a paradigm of public-private collaboration,” said Ferreira, who highlighted that in the case of the Oviedo Chamber one of its mottos is that “the proposals prevail in the face of protests” to improve the Asturian economy. And among the most important proposals – some already materialized – the launch of investment attraction offices, the generation of new spaces for the settlement of companies such as the La Vega factory in Oviedo, the streamlining of urban planning licenses, the generation of actions to tackle depopulation problems (“with the Southwest as one of our obsessions,” he noted), the development of new reformist laws that support the implementation of business projects (environmental quality law, strategic projects law. ..) and collaboration with research and science. “Asturias, our great common project, requires a purpose of unity, commitment and collaboration towards the future,” said Ferreira during his speech.
The vice president of the Oviedo Chamber pointed out that companies must assume their commitment. “We must become agents of change, we have a leading role, essential to strengthen the economic fabric, guarantee of the desired state of well-being,” said Ferreira, who added that “starting with us, leading by example, cannot be an obstacle to demand the unavoidable reform of public administrations that have the political obligation to rise to the challenges, to be efficient and to contribute, to the extent possible, to the proper functioning of economic activity.”
To promote change in this decade. Ferreira claimed a political model based on determination. “Politics is a verb, but, above all, it is action,” he said. He also highlighted the need to “exploit two potential resources: the quality of life and the cost of living, to retain, recover and attract talent and a qualified workforce, the main ingredients for economic and business dynamism and thus overcome the challenge demographic”. It was at that point when he highlighted that other territories are also competing in terms of fiscal regulations and pointed out that “it would be a good third competitive argument to add, which should be valued more based on fiscal intelligence criteria than fiscal ideology.”
The vice president of the Chamber highlighted that there are three dynamics, “three isms,” that urgently need to be revoked. Firstly, “bureaucratism, which cages creativity, makes public administrations inefficient and slows down the productive economy.” Secondly, “localisms that do not understand the new order, preventing territorial innovation and metropolitan development and making it difficult for us to overcome the political concept of deputation (sum of municipalities) in favor of a true regional scale project. And thirdly” immobility, represented by those resistant to change, who impede natural evolution and who, when pressed, only think about how to do gatopardism, that of changing everything so that nothing changes.
Eggs in several baskets
Both Eva Roces and Carmen de la Uz nodded when they listened to José Manuel Ferreira. They focused their intervention on explaining the trajectory of the family businesses they run, their adaptations to change and their challenges.
Eva Roces is part of the second generation at the head of the Roces Group, made up of five companies in the production and distribution of fuels and metals sectors. “The origin of the group is in the initiative and vision of my father, who began transporting coal with a truck,” said Eva Roces, who noted that in 1974 her father, together with his brother, founded Hierros y Carbones. . In 2002 they bought the Industrias Doy-Manuel Morante coke factory in Trubia, a company that had been founded by Eudosia León, “Doy”, to increase the added value of the coal that was extracted in her family’s mines. “She founded the company in 1948, at a time when women could not even open a checking account without their husband being with them, and that is why Doy’s name was added to that of her husband, Manuel Morante, who was gynecologist and had no responsibility in the company,” Eva Roces told an anecdote.
In 2006, the purchase of Industrias Doy-Manuel Morante was accompanied by the acquisition of a rolling factory for light rails that are used in logistics centers, mines, factories… “In 2002, the five companies that make up the Roces Group had a turnover of more than 98 million of euros and obtained a profit of more than 6.3 million euros”, highlighted Eva Roces, who added that 64% of sales are outside Spain, on four continents. “There are companies in the group whose sales abroad exceed 70%, that has helped us take the chestnuts out of the fire when there were difficulties in Spain by not having all our eggs in the same basket,” explained the CEO of the Roces Group, who highlighted that growth is supported by his father’s vision, the professionalism and commitment of the people who work in the companies, the support of financial providers, the constant search for new clients and markets, the control of commercial risks and investing profits in improving facilities. “In the last two years we invested 13.2 million in energy use and emissions reduction projects in Trubia,” said Eva Roces.
The differentiation
Carmen de la Uz also belongs to the second generation at the head of a business group, in this case that of De la Uz perfumeries, with 30 establishments in Asturias that emerged from a small neighborhood establishment on Valentín Masip street in Oviedo. founded in 1969. “After 18 years, the second perfume shop was opened on Fruela Street. It meant making the leap to the city center and gaining a lot of visibility in the eyes of the people of Oviedo and those who went to the El Fontán market” , explained the general director of the Uz Group. Ten years later a third store would arrive in Melquiades Álvarez and then the acquisition of the premises of the Asturian perfumery chains Brumas and Kombi. Today the group employs 150 people. “My parents were visionaries,” said Carmen de la Uz, who highlighted the importance and need “to work every day, always have the high lights on and always look for differentiation.”
Today’s event; metal, a sector for entrepreneurship
The third session of the The session is titled “Metal Asturias: a sector for entrepreneurship” and includes Antonio Fernández-Escandón, president of the company Zitrón and the Federation of Metal and Related Entrepreneurs of the Principality of Asturias (Femetal); Victoria Villegas, managing partner of Fundyser and Fernando Sáez, CEO of Atox Storage Systems. The table will be moderated by María del Mar Arenas, director of the Department of Quantitative Economics at the University of Oviedo.
They sponsor:
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