The Catalan Institute of Finances (ICF) and the European Investment Fund (EIF) signed an agreement yesterday to create a new investment fund that invests in technology transfer projects in Catalonia. The ICF, through the Department of Economy and Finance, will invest 30 million and the FEI 15 million as a minimum. After the approval of the Perte of the car, comes the race to obtain the bank guarantees in order to receive the approved aid. To ensure the Nissan decarbonization hub project, the Generalitat has approved the granting of a guarantee from the Institut Català de Finances (ICF) for an amount of 40 million euros. But another problem has arisen: the ICF is not a banking entity and therefore its guarantee would not be valid, in accordance with Perte regulations.
The guarantee was approved last Tuesday by the Consell Executiu de la Generalitat pending reaching an agreement with the Ministry of Industry to make its criteria more flexible. This is what is expected at the Nissan reindustrialization table, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.
The solution is negotiated against the clock, since the term for the presentation of the guarantees expires on Tuesday. The situation has reopened the debate on the need for the ICF to equip itself with a bank card, as the Catalan government defends against the criteria of the Bank of Spain. The supervisory entity directed by Pablo Hernández de Cos denied earlier this year the file request made by the Generalitat in 2021.
For the hub led by QEV and Btech, obtaining guarantees is proving difficult, among other things because it currently does not even have facilities with which to respond to the bank. It has an agreement for this with the Australian Goodman group, the only candidate to manage the old Nissan land in the Free Zone, but we have to wait for the contest launched by the Consorci de la Zona Franca to be definitively resolved, which will take some time. some weeks.
In total, the group that forms the hub will receive 107.8 million from Perte (strategic plan for economic recovery and transformation) for an investment of 305 million. Like all beneficiaries, you must present guarantees for the same amount of aid, a requirement with which the Government wants to ensure that public money is used for what is promised.
The idea of turning the ICF into a bank, capturing customer deposits, was already launched in 2013, when the Government was chaired by Artur Mas with Andreu Mas-Colell as Minister of Economy. While the Bank of Spain maintains that the ICF is a "non-monetary financial entity", the Generalitat aspires to access the ECB's financing lines under the same conditions as the rest of the banks.
