The president of the Institute of Economic Studies of the Province of Alicante (Ineca), Ignacio Amirola, has met with the Secretary of State for the Economy, Gonzalo García, the sub-delegate of the Government, Araceli Poblador, and business and social representatives of the province of Alicante, to expose the socioeconomic challenges of the province for the coming years.

The president of Ineca has highlighted that, unlike the rest of Spain, the province of Alicante continues to lose positions in absolute and relative terms. It is enough to remember that unemployment was almost 11% and now in 2022 it is 14.7% - when in Spain it is 13.7% today.

To this circumstance, Amirola added that the province of Alicante has been losing positions in the national group where we have gone from occupying position 27 in per capita income in 2000, to descending to position 40 in 2008 and reaching the current which stands at 44.

"Alicante has not only lost positions in its fundamental macroeconomic data, but we have also lost export weight and our inflation is somewhat higher than the national average, which hampers our competitiveness."

The president of Ineca has also made reference to the investments coming from the General State Budgets (PGE). Amirola explained to the Secretary of State for the Economy that "although in absolute terms we occupy position 22 with 183.6 million euros, in relative terms associated with the population, we fall to the bottom of the table, underfinancing that has become recurrent. This situation is also aggravated by an infrastructure deficit of more than 3,000 million since the last fourteen years.

Amirola has asked the Secretary of State that the low investment budgeted and subsequently executed must change radically and Alicante must begin to occupy the position that corresponds to it in the PGE. In addition, he has asked Gonzalo García that the PERTEs be truly used as an instrument to revitalize our economy, not only in a sector as important to us as tourism, but also with specific PERTEs for the industry or for footwear, which are so essential in our territory.