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15 Jun 2020
Basque clusters met remotely with Basque Government Minister for Economic Development and Infrastructures, Arantxa Tapia, on 12 June last, to discuss the economic and industrial situation after the COVID-19 crisis. The meeting was the fourth monthly encounter held with the Minister throughout the crisis to analyse the situation of the industry.
She began by running through Basque Government forecasts for 2020 and 2021 with regard to GDP, employment and public accounts. She also reported on the range of initiatives being rolled out by her Department to foster the recovery of the economy: liquidity, activation of demand, support for R&D, attracting European Commission aid. At this point, the Minister thanked the role played by the clusters during the crisis, both in liaising and in supporting businesses. She also asked for them to continue to help companies in difficulties and to activate projects and initiatives that will attract EU funding, particularly along the two priority lines put forward by the Next Generation EU plan to drive recovery: digitisation and energy transition.
Following this, each cluster Association outlined the situation of the businesses across the various sectors and value chains, putting forward their own proposals and perspectives of reactivation.
With regard to reactivation measures, he told the Minister that the measure that businesses were most eager to see put in place was recovering access to key clients and target markets as quickly as possible, as the loss of contact with potential customers was having a serious effect on the order books of many businesses, with an expected major impact on their activity in the final quarter of 2020 and in 2021. Hormaeche explained that other essential measures would include strategic monitoring of the markets and intensifying technology development and the digitisation of products and processes; many businesses are currently reinforcing these processes. Finally, he also outlined some of the initiatives being implemented by ACE to support and foster measures proposed by its members.
Keyword
Technology
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