"You have to revitalize the export, it starts to show signs of stagnation," says Antonio Bonet. We are in the headquarters of the Club of Exporters and Investors, of which Bonet was co-founder in 1997 and that he presides for two years. A sun of justice falls on Madrid, but he does not flinch. It is Seville. He even wears a jacket and tie. "My great-grandfather was a military man. He was stationed in Cuba and, on the way back, the family split up. A branch settled in Madrid, set up a laboratory and was very successful. Mine stayed in Seville. He opted for cinema. I don't know if you have heard of Bengal Films. Instead of the lion of the Metro, a tiger came out at the beginning of the movies. In Spain my grandfather distributed them. It was fatal. "

Bonet opted for a more orthodox professional exit. He studied business, opposed a commercial technician and has been assigned to Chile, the United Nations and China. Then he got a Fulbright scholarship, attended a master's degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and returned as vice president of a major bank. "That was more bureaucratic than the Ministry of Economy and Commerce. For any operation, the risk committees of Madrid, Brussels, London, had to be asked for permission."

He resigned after three days and launched his own company: ACE International Consultants. He advises governments on the design and execution of public policies. On the web you have your projects uploaded. It has helped streamline water management in Cape Verde, expedite the Administration's payments in Comoros or reduce poverty in Papua New Guinea.

-Cooperation is not very well known among economists, I say, and I repeat to you the case of anarchocapitalist Doug Casey-: It is that the poor of the rich countries give money to the rich of the poor countries.

-It works better than it seems, Bonet responds. There are indicators of all kinds that corroborate it: child mortality and people living below the threshold of severe poverty have fallen dramatically, the education of girls and women has become widespread ... But it is not easy. Development requires a change of mindset that takes time. I remember that in ACE we won a contest to boost Polish exports. We talked to the officials and explained that if they wanted to sell their tan, they had to go to the fairs of the sector and show what they were doing. This year, we told you, they are not going to sell anything, the next one either and the next one maybe. It didn't fit them in the head. Go for nothing ?, they told us. Sure, sure, or they go three times or they are nobody. They did not believe it.

The mentality is an insidious variable. It does not figure in the useful functions of economists and, however, can fatally alter the income statement. "In Spain it is not bad that people go down to breakfast at mid-morning and throw three quarters of an hour. There is also a lot of tolerance for absenteeism . " According to Adecco, last year it cost us 85,140 million euros, 10% more than in 2017. "Why has it exploded in full bonanza? The diseases are the same, and I don't think there are more domestic problems either. It's an issue cultural".

This way of being ours, so cheerful and casual, adds to the long list of regulatory and educational deficiencies that undermine productivity and explain that exports show signs of exhaustion. And the problem is that many of our crises have started with the strangulation of the balance of payments. The last one is still fresh in memory. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in 2008, our need for external financing was 10% of GDP. Suddenly, panic seized the interbank market, nobody lent to anyone and Spanish entities were forced to drastically cut credit, plunging the country into a deep recession.

In the following years, we closed the gap with great sacrifices until we reached a current account surplus of 2.3% in 2016. But since then that mattress has been consumed and in April 2019 it had been reduced to 0.7%. "What is behind this deterioration and how long can it continue?" Asks CaixaBank Research economist Jordi Singla in an eerily titled article "A ghost of the past?"

DIAGNOSIS

"The Club of Exporters and Investors provides three kinds of services," says Bonet. "We try, first of all, to influence the Administration and civil society to adopt measures that facilitate internationalization, such as the signing of double taxation agreements. That is an activity. Another is the holding of meetings in which, for example, a diplomat exposes to our partners the business opportunities that there may be in India or Latin America. Finally, we make reports. "

The most recent is signed by researcher Juan de Lucio and attributes the slowdown in exports to a double battery of factors. On the one hand, there would be the external ones: the uncertainty caused by brexit and oil volatility, China's change to a growth model based on consumption and, above all, the war between Washington and Beijing, "which is not only commercial or technological, "he points out," but of a political model, one democratic and the other authoritarian. "

- Is Donald Trump right?

- Their forms are not the most appropriate. You cannot go around the world threatening your allies and trampling on the multilateral system we have given ourselves to resolve disputes. Now, China does not respect the rules. When he joined the WTO, he was granted many privileges, thinking that they would be corrected as he abandoned communism, but the democratic transition has not arrived and the abuses have worsened. It subsidizes its industries, twists its arm to foreign companies to transfer technology, does not open its sectors to competition and is keeping many infrastructure projects in Latin America and Africa pushing down, with absolute disregard for environmental criteria and anti-corruption

Trump's crusade against these practices has almost halved the growth rate of international merchandise trade: if 2017 closed with an increase of 4.7%, this year it will remain at 2.6%. This loss of dynamism is hurting us all: the United States and China, of course, but also Germany, Vietnam and Spain.

The other battery of reasons why our export stagnates is internal. It is true that the current pull is much healthier. The previous surpluses of our balance of goods and services had been preceded by a monetary devaluation, which cheaper items denominated in pesetas and spurred their sales. It was, unfortunately, an ephemeral boom, because the demand pressure itself moved to prices, which soon recovered the level of departure.

This time there has been no devaluation and, nevertheless, the positive balance recorded since 2012 has been higher than any other observed in the last century, both in volume and duration. "To find similar surpluses," writes Juan de Lucio in his report, "we have to go back to the First World War [and] they were still less intense."

What was the cause of this phenomenon? To improve the export capacity of companies. The structure that supports our foreign sector is more stable and broad. The collapse of the internal market forced us to look for customers outside and we have more firms selling all over the world. "In 2018 they increased more than 25%," says Bonet.

The diversity of destinations is also greater. Economist Jorge Salas explains in a paper for the International Monetary Fund that in 2000 73.1% of exports went to the EU. Now the proportion is 52.7%. The rest ends in emerging markets in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.

But the quality of our products has not advanced. The Economic Complexity Index, which measures the intensity of knowledge exports, places us in a mediocre position 28. In the eurozone, only Greece is worse. Our competitiveness gain is based on the fall in wage costs induced by the labor reform of 2012. "Is this strategy socially sustainable?" Asks Lucio.

SIZE

In July 2014, Bonet sold ACE to US engineering AECOM, which bills more than 20,000 million dollars. He stayed at the head of the consulting firm for a while, but he ended up resigning and it is interesting to hear some of the setbacks that the integration encountered, because they are very revealing of the rigidities that, inspired by the best intentions, grip the daily life of our economy .

"The Americans who bought us had another company in Spain," he says. "They were doing summer time and their company committee was in favor of applying it, but if we worked with Latin America and there were between six and eight hours apart, when were we talking? In the end, we could not merge fully."

The obligation to deal with union representatives is one of the reasons why many SMEs think twice before gaining size. "From 50 employees you have to form a company committee and, from six million sales, you become a big taxpayer and you must prepare monthly VAT and personal income tax returns. I understand that more than one resists making the leap" .

According to Eurostat, the size of Spanish companies is 22% lower than the EU average, and that has consequences. "In ACE we operated with software that allowed us to present ourselves to more contests than anyone else and, consequently, we were awarded more. But that software cost us more than two million and, if you invoice a million, you can hardly face such an investment."

Size is "a key determinant of competitiveness," agrees Rafael Doménech, head of economic analysis at BBVA Research, who points out that "large Spanish companies are as productive as those in Germany."

We have nothing to envy anyone. What penalizes us is the atomization of our productive fabric. We need to concentrate it and, although Bonet modestly indicates that he does not have the remedy, he does argue that it was equally appropriate to review the thresholds from which he becomes a large taxpayer or it is mandatory to have a works council. "Why six million euros of turnover? Why 50 employees?"

MARGIN

While I chat with Bonet, the parties continue to throw away the tackle in the San Jerónimo race. "There are those who consider that it is not so bad that we have been without government for months," he said.

"That was what they said about Italy," Bonet replies, "and notice how it is today." In the liquid reality that we have to live, "we must constantly adapt and that requires structural changes that only a stable Executive can undertake."

Bonet warns that "the momentum of the labor reform has been exhausted" and, although "it would be a serious mistake to reverse," Lucio thinks that internal devaluation is not socially sustainable. "Our future cannot depend on that, because we eat low-wage countries."

Instead, it proposes adapting education to the demands of the market ("our young people do not leave with the necessary qualification"), lower energy ("it is very expensive"), promote innovation ("we are the ones that invest less in R&D D + i ") ...

It is an agenda that should be launched already, because the first quarter has been "the worst export start since 2009," says Bonet. Should we worry? For now, there is scope. "The global context in which the Spanish economy operates has become less favorable," writes Jordi Singla in his article for CaixaBank Research, but "he has managed to maintain the foreign surplus and, although this has moderated, it is far to reissue the deficits prior to the Great Recession. "

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • China
  • Spain
  • Madrid
  • Africa
  • Germany
  • GDP
  • Un
  • Cuba
  • Chile
  • Donald Trump
  • BBVA
  • Asia
  • London
  • U.S
  • IMF
  • Greece
  • Personal income tax
  • Italy

Consumption This is the first physical store of Aliexpress in Spain, its "gateway to Europe"

EconomyThe Pound crisis threatens the tourism campaign in 2020

GDP Tourism already shows signs of exhaustion in the middle of the industry