Oriol Amat, full academician of the Royal European Academy of Doctors-Barcelona 1914 (RAED), president of the Catalan Association of Accounting and Management and deputy in the Catalan Parliament asserts that, economically, Catalonia is comparable to most European economies, although it lacks big companies, a lack that it shares with the rest of countries of the south of Europe. “It’s often said that Catalonia is a country of SMEs, but I would say that all the industrialized countries are the same. In Catalonia, 97% to 98% of the fabric is microenterprise and small and medium enterprises. It’s a percentage similar to the countries that do have large companies, such as the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom or the Netherlands. There, instead of 98% of SMEs, they are 96%. Here we would lack, as in Spain, Portugal, Greece and to some extent Italy, large companies”, Amat says in an interview published by the newspaper El Punt-Avui.
Amat points out that the diversification of sectors is the great strength of the Catalan economy, as well as that the industrial sector represents 20% of its GDP, the objective that marked the European Union to its members in the year 2020. “Catalonia has a relevant industrial weight – continues the academician-. The first sector is the food industry, followed by chemistry, car, pharmaceutical and a succession of sectors representing between 1% and 2%. Some, riding between the industrial and services, such as the one that depends on health, very dynamic at the moment in Barcelona and throughout Catalonia”.
For Amat, the Catalan economy should take as an example the Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway or Finland) and other countries of its size with a long democratic trajectory like Austria, where a dynamic and innovative private sector coexist with a strong public sector that guarantees the welfare of its citizens. “A feature of these economies is the collaboration between the private and public sectors. They have a powerful private sector, a very powerful, prestigious and efficient public sector, and they also have a third sector, the world of cooperatives, foundations and NGOs, very solid”, he concludes.
