©Reuters. Spain aspires to be the entrepreneurial country with the greatest social impact
Miami (USA) Apr 20 (.).- Spain aspires to be the “entrepreneurial country with the greatest social impact in history”, following a different model than that of providing tax incentives to companies and “without forgetting the people nor leave anyone behind, Francisco Polo, High Commissioner of Spain Entrepreneurial Nation, tells Efe.
Polo is in Miami, where he has participated in the eMerge Americas innovation fair and has appointments with those interested in the opportunities that Spain offers in investments and talent, matters in which the Startups Law is going to mean a “true revolution”, according to his words.
The High Commissioner is sure that the Spanish Congress will approve the law at the end of the year, since it is “a milestone” of the Recovery and Resilience Plan for which the European Union has allocated millions of funds.
The law, the draft of which was approved in December and in whose elaboration the citizens have participated, is one of the 50 measures of a ten-year strategy and supported with 4,200 million euros to transform the productive bases of the country.
As Polo explained yesterday before the eMerge Americas fair, the law may mean investment figures for venture capital funds in Spain “even better” than those of 2021, when the historical record of 4,294 million euros was achieved, an amount four times higher to that of 2020.
A REVOLUTIONARY LAW
Among other novelties, it will provide Spain with the best “stock options” treatment in all of Europe, it will create a new category of visa for digital nomads and increase, in the case of an investor or entrepreneur, the validity of the initial residence visa from 1 to 3 years.
The law also provides for a five-year tax reduction for entrepreneurs and investors, among other measures.
In his interview with Efe, he insisted that the law will bring “two great revolutions in the field of investment and in the field of talent.”
In the first, he highlighted that the legal figure dedicated to the taxes paid by a venture capital fund when it has profits is given the status of law.
“The fact that it did not have the status of law generated a certain legal insecurity for venture capital funds. Now, we hope to attract many more venture capital funds and venture capital fund managers and, therefore, help solve the challenge of investing in startups in our country”.
The elimination of the requirement to obtain the NIE, the identification number for foreigners, in order to invest in a startup is another of the changes that will make Spain more attractive to investors.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP, THE “ICEBREAKER” OF CHANGE
The “icebreaker” to move towards change in the productive bases is innovative entrepreneurship, says Polo, who defines his position as high commissioner for Spain’s Innovative Nation as “a kind of startup in the Presidency of the Spanish Government”.
Polo says he noticed during his visit to Miami “interest” in this strategy of the Spanish Government,
“In Spain we have a very good fabric of startups (…) and now for the first time we have a public policy to articulate one of the levers for transforming productivity in a country”, such as the innovative entrepreneurship sector, together with to education and science, he says.
To a question from Efe about whether it could be compared to what the Irish government did to attract companies to the country, Polo replies that it is “totally different” and does not seek to compete with tax incentives.
“The problem that we want to solve at source is that the meaning of the economic crisis does not continue to have the meaning in Spain that it has had until now,” he says.
CRISIS AND RESILIENCE
Spain took much longer than other European countries to recover from the 2008 crisis because, in his opinion, it had “an economic model based on jobs with little value contribution and these jobs are the first to be destroyed by the economic crisis and generated , therefore, an enormous suffering among the population”.
“The objective of the Entrepreneurial Spain strategy is to change the productive model to generate more employment, of better quality and so that people can fully develop their life project,” he says.
It is also about “closing the gender gap, the territorial gap, the socioeconomic gap and the generational gap”.
But, in addition, Polo stressed that the Government seeks to incorporate the ten main sectors of the Spanish economy, which represent 60% of GDP, into the strategy.
“Because what we want is that this capacity for innovation, job creation, generation of better products, services or operations that the innovative entrepreneurship sector has, be transferred from the bulk of the economy.”
“We want Spanish companies to also be more competitive, more resistant to the blows of economic crises and more resilient,” he asserted.
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