Publication CEPYME500 2017

#MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY SECTOR
What do you think are the main problems which the companies within the
sector face?
The problems are the same as those of all Spanish companies in terms of
taxation, labour market, internationalisation, market unit, innovation, digitalisation
or training. But some of them are specific to the industrial activity itself,
which today generates 16% of GDP. In comparison, in the 70s, it reached
34%. These data show a negative trend that urgently needs to be reversed in
order to achieve the 20% objective set by the EU for 2020.
The financing difficulties of Spanish industrial companies, many of them
small-sized, the obstacles to training and qualification of workers, the insufficient
investment in innovation, the difficulties for going abroad, the worrying
fragmentation of the internal market, the uncompetitive energy market or
the current cost structure are some of the main problems that the Spanish
industry currently faces.
And the biggest opportunities?
Industry is the engine of the big economies, its hallmark and its guarantee of
future. Reindustrialisation is a challenge and a requirement, the only guarantee
for the creation of qualified and stable employment and, especially in the
concrete case of Spain, the best weapon against structural unemployment.
That is the greatest opportunity, its character as an economic sector that is
essential to maintain prosperity and the welfare state. With it, the industrial
tradition of our country, its good level of productivity and infrastructures, its
technology and personnel must continue to grow and improve.
“Industry is the engine
of the big economies, its
hallmark and its guarantee
of future”
054 | CEPYME500