Santa Cruz de Tenerife, (EFE) has revised the growth forecast for the Canary Islands economy from 7 to 9% for 2022.
At a press conference to discuss the business results for the fourth quarter of the year and their prospects for 2023, the president of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Chamber of Commerce, Santiago Sesé, highlighted that the results “have broken with negative expectations”. , since 31.4% of the Canarian businessmen, regardless of size and sector, improved, while 54.6% maintained their activity and 14% reduced their activity.
As a result of this good economic performance, the forecast for 2023 means that the business confidence indicator has a growth of 4.4 percent, the second in Spain, after the Basque Country (5.7).
And for this reason the Chamber of Commerce is revising the growth forecast for the Canarian economy upwards.
Santiago Sesé has stated that this year will be one of growth, but less intense than in 2022, since there will be a slowdown due to factors such as the geopolitical uncertainty generated by the war in Ukraine or high inflation.
He has also emphasized the incidence that the rise in interest rates will have, because the cost that companies will have in operating expenses but also in investment will rise.
For this reason, the Chamber of Commerce of Santa Cruz de Tenerife demands that public support mechanisms be put in place so that investment, both public and private, can be activated as much as possible, and thus Santiago Sesé has asked that more attention be paid to activate Next Generation funds.
But also other items, such as the budgets of the administrations, and that there is more legal certainty for private investment.
The general director of the entity, Lola Pérez, has said that the data from the business confidence indicator for the fourth quarter of 2022 are “surprising”, and has commented that this 4 percent increase is the highest record since they began to be collect these data in 2003.
Lola Pérez has stressed that business confidence has risen in all sectors, especially construction (6.2%), and by islands it is striking that it has only fallen in La Gomera, by 0.8 percent, while in Tenerife it rose 4.5%; in La Palma 7.3%; in El Hierro, 4.2%; in Gran Canaria 6.8%; in Lanzarote 1.2% and in Fuerteventura 2.5%. EFE
