After the press conference on the alleged benefits of the CACT in the midst of the pandemic, it can only be concluded that a miracle has occurred with a proper name and a culprit: Benjamín Perdomo and Loly Corujo, respectively, who are the architects of the lying miracle to cover up the very serious economic error —which we all pay for, by the way, of not applying a textbook ERTE in the public company.
For those of us who have a minimum basic knowledge of accounting (I'm not even asking for in-depth accounting training as the position of CACT manager would require), it is a great effort to avoid blushing, even beyond the limits of vicarious shame, when having to listen to the ridiculous explanations offered by Benjamín Perdomo, CEO of CACT, regarding the economic situation of the public company.
Logical on the other hand, since he is a person with no more merit or training for the position than to suck up to the president of the Cabildo, without contributing a single project, and trying to execute, for the moment with little success, the only mission that has been entrusted to him at the head of the CACT: to try to destroy at any price the political adversaries that the boss fears so much.
How else could it occur to anyone to “sell” us that the Tourist Centers can make profits after spending so many months practically without income and, what is worse, without having reduced a single cent from the Personnel chapter; the largest of the fixed costs of the public company. A benefit of impossible explanation, when the simplest thing would have been, as we proposed from CC-PNC, to take advantage of an ERTE, which would have allowed the workers to continue receiving 100% of their salary and free up funds to allocate economic aid to SMEs and the self-employed.
Surely they will not give the recipe for the miracle to the thousands of workers and businessmen in the sector, who are being seriously affected and know that there is no greater miracle than the unfair competition that it means to bear with large public funds the terrible losses that the CACT will incur, due to the stubbornness of the lady president, while many of them will inevitably have to close their businesses.
Now it turns out that with fewer tourists —zero in several sections of the last months—, that is, with a brutal collapse of income and without saving a penny on personnel as the whole country does, we have obtained benefits because we save a lot on gender suppliers. As I said, the personification of incapacity.
Like any company, CACT has fixed and variable costs. In this case, the highest are the fixed costs, corresponding to Chapter I of Personnel; about 13 million euros per year that, before the pandemic, represented 50% of the income and now, at least, 70%. Well, it is precisely in that tremendous fixed expense, for whose containment the whole country has clamored demanding the ERTE, where by order of Loly Corujo we have spent millions of euros more that, if we had saved them, would have skyrocketed the profits of the CACT, saving its CEO the ordeal of making a fool of himself publicly.
To all this, the false pretext has been that, according to their non-existent reports, public companies cannot take advantage of this type of protection measures or the equally fallacious argument that the statutes prohibit it. Therefore, I ask the president again to make those reports public or, otherwise, admit her umpteenth lie.
On the other hand, we have the variable costs and among them the main one is that of suppliers, which in the case of the CACT basically supply gender for the stores and restaurants and their billing depends, obviously, on the volume of business. That is, since the beginning of time, it is gender that is bought at one price and sold at a higher price to obtain profit. At least it was like that until the president's advisor arrived at the CACT and re-edited the miracle of the loaves and fishes.
The reality is that miracles do not exist and the CACT has not saved a single euro from suppliers. What has unfortunately happened is that the volume of business, that is, the sales of restaurants and stores, has collapsed due to lack of customers and obviously payments to suppliers have been reduced. Simple to understand. For almost everyone.
To all this, after fourteen months, we still do not have access to the CACT accounts to which we are entitled as members of the Board of Directors, and we still do not know since March, and for the first time in decades, the collection statistics that they hide. All so that this government can continue with this headlong rush, this lying staging so that we forget about the ERTE, but without contributing anything, not a balance sheet or an income statement, without providing any of the information that they are obliged to take to the Board of Directors. Nothing more than smoke and a story that even the most gullible no longer swallow.
What will the hundreds of owners of closed restaurants and stores in Lanzarote think? Businesses that buy nothing and sell nothing and, therefore, pay nothing to their suppliers. They must be shocked when they hear, no less than a CACT manager, assure, in the anthology of nonsense, that the fall in supplier billing represents a great saving. Small and medium-sized companies that have their staff in ERTE and even so some barely resist and others have to close, while the Tourist Centers maintain 100% of the staff with millions of euros from all the people of Lanzarote that the Island Government could well allocate to aid for SMEs and the self-employed as the rest of the councils do, and without harming anything —rather the opposite— the CACT staff.
Despite everything, the SMEs and self-employed of Lanzarote can rest assured since the president also announced —without blushing— that “in the budgets of next year 2021”, when many no longer exist, she will also remember you.
Pedro M. San Ginés Gutiérrez is the spokesperson for Coalición Canaria-PNC in the Cabildo de Lanzarote