The CEO of the Tourist Centers, Benjamín Perdomo, has stated in an intervention before the media that the report prepared by the secretary of the Cabildo of Lanzarote "endorses the theses" that from the Centers "has been maintained to introduce a modification in the criteria that define the income that the Centers must make to the Cabildo from this year onwards”.
“It is a detailed and rigorous document that will serve as a basis to correct this nonsense, since until now a fee has been applied that has varied depending on the needs of the Cabildo to balance its budget,” he explained.
In this sense, the CEO of the Entity indicated “that it is unacceptable that the criterion we inherited from previous corporations can lead us from having a profit of 50,000 euros in the 2021 financial year to fictitious losses, which can be used in a twisted way to sow doubts about the rigorous management we carry out and the work and effort made by all the workers of this Entity to face and overcome the crisis generated by the coronavirus. It is totally irrational,” he insisted.
Perdomo pointed out that, “precisely because of the secretary's report, which rejected the tax nature of the fee due to the lack of a regulatory ordinance and the existence, on the contrary, of an assignment of assets to the Centers, the Cabildo's budgets for the 2023 financial year already correct this situation and open the door for an ex officio review of the amounts unduly charged to the Tourist Centers in recent years.”
The councilor also recalled that work is being done on a modification of the statutes that “will determine, in a normative way, the destination of the profits generated by the Centers”. In this sense, the Board of Directors approved urging the Cabildo to apply the fee criterion approved in the plenary session of November 2014, which established:
- That the fee is calculated on the profit of each center, not on the profit of the entire Entity.
- The Cabildo of Lanzarote, as owner of the Art, Culture and Tourism Centers, will assume 100% of the possible losses of each center, without the possibility of passing these on to the town councils of Tinajo, Haría and Yaiza.
- In order to guarantee the sustainability of the Entity's values in the future and, therefore, its capacity to generate profits, 20% of its profits must be allocated annually to direct investments executed by the Entity in the Centers.
