Manel Simon, general director of Afrucat, has put the Association at the disposal of the Spanish Ministry of Industry and Small and Medium Enterprises (Mincotur) and the Government of Catalonia to become a "Next Agent".
Simon says that "in the coming years, there will be different lines of aid launched in a decentralized way to take advantage of the Next Generation funds. We have asked for a unified approach, but since this will not be possible, we will keep an eye on the lines from the various Ministries fitting our needs. Afrucat says that just as the figure of the COVID agent was created to centralize information about COVID, with these aids there should also be a figure centralizing the lines for each sector."
This offer by Afrucat has been made during a webinar held on June 21, in which the consultancy KPMG, the Secretary General of Mincotur and the Secretary for Enterprise and Competitiveness of the Government of Catalonia, Albert Castellanos, participated. This webinar brought together more than 300 companies, mostly from the agro-food sector, and has served to publicly announce that the agro-food sector will have a PERTE (Strategic Projects for Recovery and Economic Transformation) that will be the second in terms of importance, after the one for electric vehicles.
This PERTE will make it possible to have a direct and exclusive economic reserve for the agro-food sector, in addition to the usual lines of aid that will be opened by each Ministry.
According to Raúl Blanco, "there is no reason to become anxious, since there will be lines of aid until 2023, and what matters most is to have a clear idea about the lines of investment that companies need and to keep an eye on what's published."
One of the most important aspects of these aids is that they will not be retroactive; that is to say, investments that have already started before their publication will not be eligible. In addition, they will be of competitive concurrence and the projects that opt will be considered according to the adequacy of the request to the requirements of each call. The aspects that give you points for the Next Generation funds are resilience, digitalization, modernization, competitiveness and ecology.
Foodfutur
The webinar was organized by the Foodfutur platform, made up of Afrucat, Anafric, the Catalan Wine Association, Catalonia Gourmet and Fecic. The various organizations bring together more than 2,800 companies, 110,000 direct workers, 20,000 million Euro in turnover and 11,500 million in exports.
Foodfutur was created to take advantage of sectoral synergies, address cross-cutting challenges and envision the future of the agro-food sector.
For more information:
Afrucat
Carrer del Corregidor Escofet, 64
Edifici Espai Fruita
25005 Lleida, Spain
Tel.: +34 973 220 149
www.afrucat.com
www.fruita.cat