Since 2007 a stunning 5,000 businesses have gone down the drain in Granada – imagine how many have gone bust all over the country.
This information was given in a report, drawn up by the Caja Rural, which places the province of Granada at the tail end of recovery on a national scale.
The report, which was composed by leading economists, takes into consideration internal and external causes that have placed Granada in such an unenviable position.
One of the economists, Miguel González, points out that within Europe, Spain is the worse affected and that within Spain, the region of Andalucia occupies bottom slot, and within Andalucia, at the very bottom, sits Granada… Ole!
The fault lies in the three pillars of our provincial economy, the private service-sector, the public service-sector and the building sector, all of which took considerable hits.
The Private service-sector, back in 2007 represented 50% of the provincial employment and PIB (Gross Provincial Product).
The public service-sector was responsible for 18% of the PIB and 20% of employment, whereas the building sector, which stood three whole points above the national average, represented 15% of the PIB and 14% of employment.
The building and private service sectors soon felt the effects of the crisis, whereas the public sector sailed on, unharmed, until the Government announced drastic cuts in the last year.
The trouble is that it was precisely these three sectors that were hardest hit by the global crisis. The industrial sector in the province isn’t worth mentioning anyway, so Granada had nothing to fall back on.
Add to all that the late and inadequate reaction by the Central and Regional Governments and the recipe for disaster is complete, right down to the strawberry on the top of the cake.
According to the report, 2011 is going to be pretty much the same as 2010 and things won’t start to recover until mid 2012, just in time for the end of the world, according to the Mayan calendar – phew, and I thought that we had a problem!
(News: Granada, Andalucia)