Spain: The food and beverage industry has a plan to revive the sector after lockdown

“As the country’s leading industrial sector, part of the solution to the crisis generated by the pandemic is to boost our companies”, the director of the sectorial organization FIAB stated. One more time, the food and beverage industry recorded positive data in production, employment and exports in 2019, but this year will suffer the impact of the global economic crisis generated by the Covid-19.

FIAB 2019

The food and beverage industry recorded positive data in production, employment and exports in 2019 , but this year it will suffer the impact of the global economic crisis generated by the Covid-19. This was made clear at the presentation of the Annual Economic Report of the Spanish Federation of Food and Beverage Industries (FIAB) for 2019, which also provided the first estimates of the impact that the pandemic has had on the food and beverage industry.

Informe FIAB

"The whole world has changed in a few months and the food and beverage industry has also begun to suffer from the coronavirus crisis. This year we will have a major impact on employment, production and exports and we expect to start recovering next year. We are confident that in 2022 we will return to figures similar to those of 2019," Mauricio García de Quevedo, FIAB's general manager, said.

Among the first estimates of the coronavirus consequences, García de Quevedo highlighted the loss of some 10 billion euros of total production (in 2019 reached more than 119 billion euros, representing 2% of domestic GDP) and the fall in exports between 6 and 10%, which in 2019 exceeded 32 billion euros.

After six consecutive years of generating employment, the Spanish food and beverage industry could lose between 4,000 and 10,000 jobs. In addition, some 800 companies, “mostly SMEs”, could be forced to close due to the pandemic, of the 30,730, which make up the industrial fabric of the sector.

Urgent measures against the crisis

FIAB has submitted to the Government a series of urgent measures for the economic revival of the sector, including economic and tax actions; for the promotion and protection of employment; for the support to exports; to boost consumption and the Food-Gastronomy-Tourism trinomial; for competitiveness and sustainability; for the support to research and innovation.

Full list of measures can be found here https://bit.ly/2T0XM62

FIAB thinks it is essential to recover the confidence of citizens in order to boost consumption and revive the economy. García de Quevedo concluded by pointing out “the importance of the Government rejecting the implementation of consumption taxes in order for the citizen to maintain a higher disposable income tax which contributes to economy recovery”.

Source: sweetpress.com