The Boards of Directors Ciment Català and Oficemen and the president of the employer association Foment del Treball, Josep Sánchez Llibre, have agreed to demand from the public powers the compliance and execution of the investments destined to the construction of infrastructures as one of the main formulas to consolidate the economic recovery of the country. Sánchez Llibre participated on October 19 in the meetings of the Spanish and Catalan employers’ associations of the cement industry, chaired respectively by José Manuel Cascajero and Salvador Fernández Capo, during which the situation of the sector and its contribution to economic recovery were addressed after the pandemic.
Both Sánchez Llibre and the sectoral representatives expressed their concern about the increase in prices of raw materials, and especially of energy products, due to the effects they have on the competitiveness of companies. The president of Foment explained that the entity that he directs has sent proposals to the Spanish Executive to be able to keep up with the rise in electricity prices, by reducing the taxes that affect it.
He also highlighted the low level of implementation of public investment in general, and especially of that destined to infrastructures “which is absolutely necessary to boost activity and to consolidate the economic recovery. It must be given a greater boost. the construction sector, especially the building sector, excessively punished in budgetary terms in recent years, due to the reduction by half of the tiny set of public aid for housing policy, which already had before in comparative terms with other European countries”.
Sánchez Llibre recalled that Next Generation funds should be used to develop green and technological infrastructure, for the benefit of the circular economy and digitization, an area in which cement and its applications are essential. He also insisted that from Foment “we will work in the search for a competitive tax system, through the publication, in the coming months, of a report on a tax reform proposal, prepared by experts in the field”.
To commemorate this meeting held at the headquarters of Foment, the presidents of Ciment Català and Oficemen presented Sánchez Llibre with a copy of the Catalan translation, the only existing one in this language, of the book De Architectura, by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (Vitruvio), the treatise on the oldest surviving architecture (1st century BC).