The Chamber of Commerce demands that public works be processed through the urgent channel. This organization points out that "all alarms point to the Construction sector, the second in economic weight after Tourism in Lanzarote." Thus, they explain that construction has maintained a certain dynamism during this first year of crisis caused by COVID 19, driven by works and reforms of private initiative. However, "the forecasts are now worrying given the slowdown in private investment, paralyzed and without activity. With more than twenty thousand people in ERTE and nearly another twenty thousand unemployed, it is a priority to expedite public works to maintain the activity of this sector. Its collapse could mean the definitive blow to the already complicated social situation on the island."
The Chamber of Commerce of Lanzarote and La Graciosa points to the stimulation of public works as a solution. "If we manage to accelerate it in time, we could avoid the fatal prognosis," he adds. The Law foresees that in exceptional situations contracts can be made through urgent and emergency procedures. The emergency is reserved for extraordinary situations of danger or need and allows certain procedures to be skipped. The urgency procedure, however, respects the Public Procurement Law by cutting the deadlines in half.
"The FECAM and the FECAI with homework undone"
For the Chamber, "the Public Administration has to react to this situation and the FECAI (Canarian Federation of Islands) and the FECAM (Canarian Federation of Municipalities) are the two organizations that must lead the coordination between local administrations so that all public works tenders are processed through the urgent channel."
"There are many public works contracting files by all public administrations (city councils, Cabildo, Government of the Canary Islands and its dependent bodies) that could be processed by urgent procedure to stop this hemorrhage," explain from the chamber entity.
According to article 119 of the Public Sector Contracts Law, the urgency procedure can be used for reasons of public interest and has the advantage that it enjoys 'priority dispatch' in the different departments, with a maximum period of five days for the reports or procedures that correspond. In addition, the deadlines for bidding, awarding and formalization are mostly reduced by half.
Finally, they state that "without public works we may find that large construction companies, in the absence of large projects, will dedicate themselves to competing with small works, expelling small companies and freelancers and causing a chain reaction that will add new layoffs and the disappearance of more small companies and freelancers."
