The Canary Islands will close 2024 leading Spain's economic growth, with a GDP increase of around 4% in the third quarter, according to the president of the Chamber of Commerce of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Santiago Sesé, this Monday.
Santiago Sesé, who appeared at a press conference with the director of the Chamber of Commerce, Lola Pérez; and the territorial director of CaixaBank, Manuel Afonso, to present the Canary Islands Economic Situation Bulletin, celebrated that the behavior shown by the economy "has been very good", as well as the expectations of businessmen.
In the third quarter of this year, all sectors except construction have contributed to the growth of the archipelago's economy and all have registered, compared to last year, some increases, he highlighted.
The largest contribution comes from the services sector, specifically from tourism and hospitality, Sesé specified, who valued that tourism is the sector that differentiates the Canary Islands from the rest of the communities and is responsible for leading economic growth.
However, the president of the Chamber said that they cannot "neither trust nor conform" because there are still a "series of challenges" to face, the first of which refers to the training programs so that the demand of companies and professional profiles match.
Other problems that the Canary Islands have to face are mobility and housing which, in his opinion, is caused by the increase in population, and also the "vertiginous fall" in the productive fabric.
Despite the fact that the islands continue to lead business growth, there are fewer and fewer companies, he pointed out, while insisting that companies need to grow and have a "much larger" territorial scope.
He detailed that the companies registered with social security with workers at the end of the quarter have decreased and the commercial companies have fallen in the quarter by 5.4%, while the increase in the number of insolvency proceedings has increased in operational terms to 261.8%.
Lola Pérez highlighted the importance of the tourism sector in the Canary Islands, where the number of foreign tourists during the third quarter amounts to 3,432,435, 8.4% more than in the same period of 2023 and 10% above those entered in the first nine months of last year.
He also referred to the business confidence indicator, which experienced an advance for the fourth quarter of 2.4%, and that retail trade has maintained positive results during the third quarter with an increase in Social Security affiliations of 2.2%.
