Few ministers like Josep Piqué have given so much talk in such a short time after the recovery of democracy in Spain. Three days after occupying the first position in the Government as Minister of Industry and Energy, her statements were already starring in the front pages in the midst of debate and controversy. "My idea is to privatize all public companies in this legislature," she highlighted in her first interview, published on May 10, 1996, to alter the euphoria with which the first government of José María Aznar was born.
He did it in an independent condition and with the little label of being, if not an imposition, a man close to Convergència. In any case, he is a representative of the Catalan business community. It was not for nothing that he presided over the Cercle de Economia at the time of his unexpected leap into politics. Hence, he did not even keep the forms and prudence that are assumed for a politician and spoke naturally, as a businessman and economist.
That his words were well-founded and that he had been too daring in offering headlines was immediately verified, when a few days later he appeared before the Senate Committee on Industry, Commerce and Tourism to give a full account of this information and, above all, of the plans of the ministry in a long and detailed exposition that we offer extracted.
Piqué made it clear that his statements were based on a reasoned reflection. Yes, the Government came to privatize public companies –following the line, moreover, of all the surrounding countries–, but also to point out the need for a reindustrialization of the Spanish economy, anticipating risks that almost three decades later have left the Discovered the pandemic.
The adaptation to a globalized economy and the commitment to innovation in the face of the growing impossibility of competing in costs were some of the recipes that the minister offered beyond that necessary restructuring of a publicly owned industrial fabric that was a heavy legacy of Francoism.
At that time, the new minister also pointed out the need to undertake an in-depth reform of the energy sector, considering both the industry and the small consumer, betting for this on liberalization, competition and new regulatory mechanisms that affect the reduction of bills, the highest in Europe.
"I would like to start my speech with some general reflections on how we view the current situation of the Spanish industry, both from a structural point of view and from a conjunctural point of view, to later expose the policy of the Ministry of Industry in its different areas and, in particular, on the basis of three axes: in relation to private companies, public companies and energy policy.
”From a structural point of view, it is commonly accepted that the Spanish economy in recent years has undergone a certain process of deindustrialization. In some areas, this has been taken even further by making the following statement: the weight of the services sector is increasing, so that as a country we run a certain danger by gradually developing a distribution of our sectoral structure fundamentally on this basis, but losing weight from the productive point of view and, therefore, ultimately, of our economic sovereignty.
”This is an opinion that should concern us all because, indeed, there have been times when this has been the case, but it requires a few clarifications. If we look at the evolution of Spanish industry in the last 15 years in nominal terms, I believe that it can be affirmed that the weight of industry in the economy as a whole has been decreasing, around five percentage points.
”From the point of view of physical production and the evolution of productivities and the sector's own competitiveness, Spanish industry has resisted quite well in the last 15 years. And it has resisted quite well because in the last 15 years there has been an absolutely drastic opening of the Spanish industry towards foreign competition, in such a way that at the moment the market for our industry is the world and, consequently, this has imposed that , being price takers, industrial prices have grown much less than the prices of the economy as a whole.
”In order to resist this competitive pressure –which has not existed in many areas of the service sector–, the Spanish industry has had to make a huge effort to become competitive, to constantly adjust to market situations and I believe that, in global terms, , in the end with some success. That says a lot in favor of our entrepreneurs.
”I would like to introduce a first reflection regarding some statements that have sometimes been made that Spain is a country that generates few entrepreneurs, that generates little business mentality. The truth is that from a private sector perspective this is sometimes irritating, especially when it is formulated from the political sphere or from the administration.
”Reality shows us that when the conditions for competition exist, Spanish industrial entrepreneurs generally know how to react, they know how to adapt to the circumstances. The proof is in those statistical considerations that I mention. Another thing is that sometimes this ability to compete has had to be developed almost despite certain economic policies.
”In general, all the efforts to open up the Spanish economy to the exterior, which were received with apprehension and with certain mental reservations by almost everyone, have been beneficial for us. I go back in historical terms to the famous Stabilization Plan of 1959, to the Preferential Agreement with the European Economic Community of the year 1970 or to the Accession Treaty to the European Community then, today the European Union, from the year 1986.
”All these processes of opening up to the exterior that have meant substantial changes in our society and our mentality have been clearly beneficial and have had the virtue of showing the ability of our economic agents to compete, with some temporary exceptions. When, due to certain combinations of economic policy, budgetary policy and monetary policy, external conditions have been extraordinarily negative, our industrial fabric has had a hard time.
”I anticipate that it is the will of this Government and it is part of its conscience regarding what it has to do in favor of our productive fabric that such a disastrous combination of macroeconomic policies never occurs again. What interests us is to be rigorous in budgetary policy to, at the same time, be able to make that monetary policy in accordance with exchange rates and interest rates that allow us to compete. When this is the case, our business fabric reacts well.
”We believe that the basic responsibility of our productive development, of our industrial development – in short, of our economic development – lies with the private business initiative. We believe that the best service we can provide to the country is that our businessmen can act comfortably so that they can generate wealth, so that they can create jobs, so that they continue creating companies.
"From a structural point of view, this is the first approximation, not optimistic, but positive with respect to the fact that we have a sufficiently solid future if we all do things well, not only the Government, not only the political forces, not only the social partners : also businessmen and, in general, the whole of Spanish society.
”Another thing is that, naturally, in an economy as open as the Spanish one already is, we have to take very much into account the specific, temporal and spatial environment in which we find ourselves. I mean the situation. There is a piece of information that we have to get used to more and more and that is that the Spanish economic cycle is increasingly closely associated with the evolution of the European economies, particularly in continental Europe.
”I believe that the structural base is solid, that the conditions of competitiveness of the Spanish economy are good enough, but, obviously, we are increasingly dependent on our environment, we are increasingly linked to the European cycle. We must try to be rigorous, professional and self-demanding; but the environment will tell us exactly what the behavior of the sector will be in the coming months.
”This is the context in which the Government's economic policy has to operate, particularly industrial policy. There is a first reflection regarding the conception of industrial policy. I am aware that this is a subject of difficult consensus, because the very rapidity in the evolution of the economic context in which we move means that even those concepts that should be basic are completely mobile in time, that they are very fluid in themselves. .
”Industrial policy a few years ago, when we were in closed and relatively protected economies and with much greater capacity for public intervention than the current one, could be defined very clearly; Normally it was about sectoral support policies through interventions and subsidies that marked certain strategic priorities.
"You all know that this can no longer be the case, that we are integrated into the European Union, that this implies a series of limits and that we are increasingly focusing our interest on the normal functioning of market mechanisms and preserving for the public powers what we call the responsibility of generating the appropriate climate so that economic agents and social agents can act comfortably and are capable of generating wealth and employment.
”That makes it very difficult today to define industrial policy. Industrial policy is rather a set of measures, attitudes and positions with respect to our productive fabric. Therefore, it is the sum of a series of elements that, from the point of view of the actions of the public powers, constitutes the action of the Government as a whole.
”I am going to be much more explicit, even if it is wrong, perhaps, that a Minister of Industry says so. Industrial policy is basically not what a Ministry of Industry does. You will agree with me that it is very important for our companies that real interest rates are low, that access to financing channels is correct, that the labor market is efficient and flexible, that legal-commercial legislation is the appropriate one, that the infrastructures in general – transport, communications, etc. – are efficient.
”All this enumeration, which I think all of us can share is extraordinarily relevant for the competitiveness of our industries, this single enumeration already leads us to a conclusion, probably regrettable for this Minister of Industry: this is not the responsibility of the Minister of Industry. These are factors that are in the hands of the Government as a whole.
"Yes, on the other hand, it may be the responsibility of the Minister of Industry - and I anticipate that it is an obsession of this Minister of Industry in particular - to constantly transmit to the whole of the Government the concerns, concerns, interests, desires, needs of the productive sectors, that is, the industrial sectors. To say it in perhaps more graphic terms: the Ministry of Industry has the vocation of being a lobby, of being a pressure group, in the positive sense, in favor of industrialists to transmit to the whole of the Government what is useful and necessary for its development.
”Therefore, it is not a question of developing an interventionist or subsidizing industrial policy, but of being very active, very belligerent in favor of the interests of our businessmen and of our industrial sectors in the face of all government action. In a context of budget restrictions that you are familiar with and that I am sure you share to a large extent, like this minister, the best thing we can do for our industry is to fulfill our duties, is to do our macroeconomic duties well.
”In this context of budgetary restriction there are three very clear fields of action: some are sent to private companies, the private sector; another referred to the public sector and a third in the field of energy policy. With regard to action in the private sector, we are going to maintain, to the extent that our budget availability allows us, the action programs of the Ministry of Industry, which generally have a horizontal base.
”We believe that it is absolutely necessary to continue making an effort to gradually introduce elements of dissemination of our competitiveness in general by way of improving technology, research and development, topics such as industrial design and everything that may affect on product differentiation. There were some years in which our competitiveness was based on the fact that we had cheaper factor costs than the others: lower wage costs and the use of capital. This is no longer the case.
”Although it continues to be a differential factor of competitiveness with respect to other neighboring countries, our competitiveness is based less and less on these strict cost and price differentials and instead must be based more and more on our ability to differentiate our products through the introduction of those elements such as design, quality, brand, capacity to internationalize, development of commercial networks, which in the end are those that base the ability to compete in rich countries, in which, obviously, the costs Wage and factor costs are also, fortunately, higher than in Third World countries.
”The second axis of action, that of the public company, to the misfortune of this minister – I do not want them to misunderstand me – and also to his surprise, has effectively become the star issue in recent weeks, although it is probably responsibility from the minister himself for having put on the table –perhaps not entirely fortunately– certain problems of our industrial fabric in general and of our public industrial fabric in particular.
”But I have also discovered something else that I have already had the opportunity to comment on in some other circumstance. I have been in this world of politics for exactly 37 days while I have been in the private sector for eight years. I am now faced with something that surprises one, the difficulty of fighting against a newspaper headline that, of course, is the responsibility of the person who causes it, but that also reflects the simplification of a message and that, due to its very characteristics, is unable to capture all the nuances, all the additional considerations and all the asides.
”You know that the public industrial sector of the State is today separated into two completely different organizational structures. One of them is the State Industrial Agency, which brings together all those activities originating from the former National Institute of Industry and which, due to their own characteristics, are 'plugged in' –if you allow me the expression, in quotes–, to the State budgets, require contributions of public resources and have agreed commitments with the Administration itself and with the social interlocutors, in some cases limited in time, in others not.
”They are the ones that make up the sectors with problems, to put it in a non-euphemistic way, the sectors with profitability and competitiveness problems. From the enumeration that I am going to do immediately, it can be deduced that we have to face them seriously and rigorously. I am referring to the integrated steel industry, the defense industries –with the exception of aeronautical construction–, shipbuilding and unprofitable mining.
”All of them are sectors whose very enumeration leads us to reflection. We are all aware that they all have underlying structural problems; all require rigorous and serious approaches to gradually improve their efficiency and performance, so that, ultimately, they constitute less and less of a burden for all citizens.
”The objective of privatization must have a tendential component. Everything we do to improve profitability and efficiency so that in the end we can consider privatizing these sectors will translate into interest on the part of businessmen and investors in taking solid and serious positions in this type of activity. As for the State Industrial Agency, I would like to deny this simplification, which derives from certain owners, that we are going to privatize this type of company right now.
”The other great scope of the industrial public company is the one that groups the companies that are under the State Company of Industrial Participations, the SEPI. The SEPI is a recent creation whose basic objective is to take advantage of the dividends and the results of the companies that are within its portfolio to face what is called the historical debt of the National Institute of Industry.
”SEPI includes those companies that were previously part of the former National Hydrocarbons Institute and that today are, to a large extent, residual holdings because they are very minority percentages, basically those that the State maintains in Repsol –10%– or in gas companies, in Enagás –9%– and in Gas Natural –3.8%–. On the other hand, the Téneo group is integrated within SEPI, with 100%.
”Within the Téneo Group there is the entire electricity subgroup based on Endesa and all its subsidiaries, which constitute in themselves a sufficiently relevant subholding. In addition, their results support the whole of this whole 'stuff'. There are the shares in Cepsa, in Sevillana, in Gesa, in Unelco, in Eléctricas Reunidas de Zaragoza, etc. There are a whole series of highly heterogeneous sectors.
”That is why it is difficult to approach them in a minimally homogeneous way. I am referring to air transport -Iberia or Aviaco-, the aluminum sector, the pulp and paper pulp sector, the electronics sector, the capital goods sector, aeronautical construction, construction , insurance, potash mining.
”All of this configures a framework whose description shows that it is complete, a framework in which decision-making is necessarily complicated and in which we have detected enormous difficulties in establishing a sufficiently solid common thread to apply a certain policy. I explain. In some cases, these companies are important enough in themselves to have their own strategy and a certain capacity to decide independently.
”In other cases, as they are integrated into a subholding called Téneo, it is this who tries to influence decision-making and strategic approaches. In other cases, as SEPI is on top of Téneo, it is this one who tries – I will use an expression that is probably Catalan and for which you will excuse me because it is perfectly understandable – 'to chime in'. And in other cases it turns out that it is the Ministry of Industry who wants to have a special impact on a certain company because it is sufficiently emblematic to be the object of global interest of the Government.
”This is all very well, but in the end it turns out that, in practice, the Ministry of Industry has not only had very little control over the strategies of these companies and the ways of presenting their own policy, but rather, even very little information has been obtained. It is not a matter of proposing now the recovery of the power of the Government with respect to these companies, but, precisely, of doing something in the opposite direction.
”It is a matter of establishing a line of communication and control from the Government over these companies so that the actions of the industrial public sector as a whole, integrated into SEPI, are permanently consistent with the policy set by the Executive. Put perhaps somewhat graphically, it is about being able to control more in order to be in a position to lose that control more efficiently.
”All this, with what ultimate goal? Well, with the final objective that the policy around the industrial public sector is aimed at improving the efficiency of the Spanish economy, its ability to compete and the strengthening of our industrial fabric. It is not a question of entering into this debate between the public and the private, but of discerning what can allow our companies and our industries, whether public or private, to survive, compete, generate wealth, generate employment, be increasingly intertwined and increasingly vertebrate to compete in the international market.
”Of course, there may be different opinions, but the opinion of this minister is that in a large part –I would say that practically in all– of the companies integrated in the Téneo Group and in SEPI, the best way to consolidate this industrial fabric is remove these companies from the sphere of public responsibility. And I explain. The internationalization of our economy increasingly requires greater financial resources, greater efforts in terms of strategic alliances, the creation of marketing networks, and technological development.
”For many years this has been able to justify the decisive presence of the traditional national states in these companies. It is our opinion that it has ceased to be so; The public powers have increasing limitations, which in some cases are obvious, to maintain that capacity, to endure that race and that competition. Therefore, in many cases we believe that the best way to ensure the future of these companies is to think that their initiative corresponds to the private sector.
”I go to the third area. I am referring to energy policy. There is a fundamental criterion that I would like to express, I don't know if strongly, but in the clearest way possible. Our objective is to reduce energy costs, fundamentally for our industry, because we understand that it is an essential factor of competitiveness that in a completely open economy we cannot fail to take into account.
”You know that our energy costs, although it is true that they depend on our exchange rate and we are now in a somewhat better situation than a few years ago, are relatively high, especially for our industry and, therefore, we have there a significant competitive disadvantage. But it is also true that the costs of energy supplies for consumers – and quite clearly – are, in general, much higher than those of neighboring countries.
”This responds to a series of circumstances, but I think we can agree that it is the result of previous historical situations based on the existence of energy supply monopolies. This is valid in the case of hydrocarbons; it is valid in the case of natural gas; It is valid, of course, in the case of electrical energy, a sector in which, although there are different supply companies, from the territorial point of view we are in fact faced with what we would call adhesion contracts, in such a way that industrialists, Companies and consumers have to comply with the conditions requested by the specific supply company that is operating in that territory.
”From there, enormously complex regulation mechanisms have been generated. The conclusion we have reached is that if we really want to reduce the cost of energy supplies thinking about the competitiveness of our economy as a whole and the well-being of all citizens, the best way we have to do it is through the introduction of competition, of greater doses of freedom, of deregulation in those markets, breaking situations, between quotes, of privilege, which in this way allow economic agents to access these supplies much more easily.
”All this is not a simple issue that can be resolved in a more or less superficial way; it requires a lot of rigor, a lot of seriousness and time. But all these commitments to rigor, seriousness and time cannot make us lose sight – the trees should not prevent us from seeing the forest – what is our fundamental objective, which is, I insist, to reduce costs, that is, prices for the users."
