Primero Teguise, through its president Jonás Álvarez, warns of a "clear inequality when allocating the Net Yield Index to our grapes for wine with Designation of Origin."
The IRN is a fiscal coefficient that is applied to calculate the performance of agricultural activity and depending on whether it is higher or lower, more or less taxes will be paid respectively. A specific example is that many municipalities in Gran Canaria and Tenerife are applied 0.11% on the general interest, while Lanzarote is penalized with 0.16% as a whole. A smaller reduction compared to other wines from the Canary Islands.
“To make ourselves understood in our complaint”, begins the president of the island party in his speech, “winegrowers from other Canary Islands are paying less taxes, while here, in our land, we have a higher taxation rate. Something that we cannot understand when our landscape generates harsher conditions and we need much more effort to produce the grapes”.
It must be remembered that the Designation of Origin of our wine is preceded by many unique and exclusive factors of our island. From our grape, unique in the Canary Islands, Malvasía Volcánica, to our cultivation system in holes, which requires a much more precise and slower harvest than on other islands.
“They are rewarding municipalities such as Gáldar, which has a trellis cultivation, with a much simpler harvest and with an irrigation up to 4 times greater than in La Geria; while in our regions enoculture requires much more effort and entrepreneurship than in any other place in the Canary Islands”, explains the councilor in Teguise, Jonás Álvarez.
Primero Teguise regrets that "the parliamentary deputies of our island are not capable of detecting these inequalities that put our culture and idiosyncrasy in a bad place". They point out, according to the index tables published in the BOE, that "what is reflected in these types of indices is that the difference between capital and non-capital islands is reflected again, although Lanzarote, in this case, offers a more exclusive and better quality product."
"The latest subsidies announced by the Government of the Canary Islands do not yet have execution deadlines, and being halfway through the year, the Cabildo is emerging as the next institution to offer subsidy lines to our winegrowers", they point out. Primero Teguise understands that "both from the Cabildo and from the Parliament of the Canary Islands, this situation of inequality that harms a Canarian product and from our land, Lanzarote wine, known worldwide" must be brought to the Autonomous Government.
“Now, after the days of celebration of Canary Islands Day, it is worth claiming that we also give a sign and identity to our Community. Our insularity is a handicap that we should try to change, and the first thing is to make our proposals to the Parliament of the Canary Islands, and that our deputies defend our product and our wine. We ask for neither more nor less than the same treatment as the rest of the areas of the Canary Islands”, concludes Jonás.