The growth registered in the region in the last quarter could be the first of many if the Andalusian economic players know how to take advantage of the slowbalization opportunity.
Named after the International Monetary Fund (from English slow -slow or slower- and globalization -globalization-), slowbalization is the progressive slowdown of globalization that arose after the financial crisis of 2008. Since then, trade openness has been reduced internationally, fueling trade and geopolitical tensions as significant as the Trump-era US-China tariffs.
In addition to this phenomenon, and in the midst of a wave of breaking trade agreements, the Covid pandemic in 2020 and 2021 and the war in Ukraine since last year have been added, two events that have demonstrated the risk of depending on thousands of factories. from kilometers away to obtain basic products or from unreliable countries for sensitive products such as energy, with consequences as negative as the current runaway inflation.
This situation is causing the transition from a world globalization to a regionalized globalization where the different economic actors seek that the commercial activity is carried out fundamentally with neighboring countries and allies that offer closeness and guarantees in production and delivery.
It is in this context that the Andalusian community can and should take a step forward.
After many years of a global competitiveness strategy based on cost reduction, Andalusia has gained competitiveness in the Spanish and European context by improving its export share. In fact, compared to the European economies, the drop in the cost indicator in Andalusia has only been surpassed in recent years by that produced in Greece, as indicated by the data offered by the General Directorate for Economic and Financial Affairs of the Commission Union through AMECO, its macroeconomic database.
In this way, the labor cost per hour in Andalusia is €20.6, only above Portugal with €16.1/hour and the aforementioned Greece with €14.5/hour if we do not take into account the countries from the east.
However, on the one hand, said reduction in costs is due to the decrease in the employed population or increase in unemployment, the decrease in wages and, subsequently, the intensification of the productive rhythms of the employed population, which causes this strategy of internal devaluation has a very limited and painful journey for the Andalusian purchasing power. And, on the other hand, the decrease in costs during globalization was never enough to overcome competition from emerging regions such as the Asian market, with much more lax labor regulations.
In the current context, where variables such as geographical proximity and a good political relationship with the productive region become decisive factors, it is where the Andalusian reality could become a comparative advantage over the rest of Europe and, therefore, an opportunity to its positioning as a region where to locate the manufacture of products for Europe and its allies.
So much so that currently the rest of the Spanish regions are carrying out similar cost reduction processes, with the exception of the Basque Country, according to the Andalusian economy competitiveness report issued by the Confederation of Andalusian Entrepreneurs (CEA).
Taking advantage of this opportunity involves the often-mentioned need to develop a productive industry that flees from the extractive, peripheral and speculative nature of yesteryear, and is oriented towards investment and a business culture specializing in upper-middle-range products with greater value. added.
Recognizing the strategic role of tourism, industrializing Andalusia should be the axis of private business decisions and public policies. It should be noted that Andalusia is not industrializing per se, that public policies will contribute to it or the contrary, but it will be the business environment that strategically bets on the industry in Andalusia or not. It is there where both the Andalusian public and private sectors must be aware of the opportunity that the current economic situation presents to work together for the long-awaited down payment of the Andalusian economy at a national and European level.
This collaboration between Andalusian public and private economic actors backed by productive investment has already demonstrated its capacity for national leadership and its competitiveness at an international level with such notable examples as the aeronautical and aerospace sector with its central axis in Seville-Cádiz, the shipyards of the province of Cádiz and the technology park of Malaga, formerly the Technology Park of Andalusia.
The aeronautical and aerospace sector in Andalusia is one of the main centers in Europe and the only one in Spain that has a final assembly line for large aircraft such as the A400M. In addition, thanks to the aforementioned public-private collaboration, it will house the headquarters of the Spanish Space Agency in Seville and has been named European Capital of Space 2024.
The shipyards of the public company Navantia in Cádiz have a total of 17,000 jobs for the coming years, including direct and indirect jobs, thanks to the contracts awarded for the manufacture of five corvettes for Saudi Arabia, three logistics ships for the United Kingdom, a patrol boat for Morocco, six ships to be confirmed for Angola and four for the Spanish navy.
And the technology park of Malaga (Málaga Tech Park) which has 624 companies installed with more than 22,000 employees and with an aggregate turnover of 2,300 million euros. It is the headquarters of the national and international associations of science parks and the coordination of the Ibero-American Network of Science and Technology Parks.
To these examples we should add, as a reminder, the extraordinary geostrategic position of the region, the coastal penetrability of more than 1000 km. and the new connection with the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) that is being carried out through the province of Granada.
Undoubtedly, Andalusia and its economic actors have a unique opportunity for business investment and industrialization, which places the community at competitive levels such as those that Seville already had in 1930 (when it had more than 200 factories) or Malaga in 1850, time when it was known as the second Spanish industrial city.
Will we be able as a region to take advantage of this circumstance to resume industrial leadership positions within Spain and position ourselves in the manufacture of products with high added value at a national and international level? If the market winds are taken advantage of, the data is blowing in favor of this current.
