“We are heading towards mass closure of SMEs and high rates of bank defaults”

– How about the self-employed and small businesses?

-It’s bad. But this is a system issue. This country makes laws for big corporations, not the self-employed. There is a lack of legislation and financing for SMEs. Since the beginning of the epidemic, SMEs and the self-employed have been mistreated and inflation has punished them heavily. Costs are increasing exorbitantly, and small companies are also unable to pass prices on to customers because they have lost. That’s more poverty, more job loss.

–Many small businesses are still open but not operating.

– The bankruptcy moratorium has been extended, which has created ghost companies. Why are there still so many workers at ERTE? Because they are fake. If I’m your brother, I have a company and things are going badly for me, I do ERTE and you get a salary without being called unemployment. Even though the company is gone, I support it as much as I can, but I extend it as much as I can. The moratorium expires on June 30.

– So what is going to happen?

– It’s a ruin. 300,000 SMEs disappeared on 31 December. We estimate that 300,000 more will disappear in June. In SME, not like in multinational companies with lawyers and muscles, if you have to demand 3,000 euros, you won’t, because the lawyer will ask you for 2,500 euros… you won’t be charged and you will have to pay the fees. It won’t make up for you. In most cases there will be no competition. The company itself will undertake the liquidation, there will be no bankruptcy manager. You already know you can’t pay. Added to all this is an increase in taxes.

– Is the tax pressure on the company growing?

-There are two tax increases: one in the eyes of others and the other hidden and worse. Treasury systems should be upgraded at the same rate as inflation. The government says it freezes taxes, but in fact it does exactly the same thing it criticizes when it does on potatoes, this is another discount (commercial practice of reducing the amount of produce but keeping the same thing). packaging). Management does not accept inflation to its debtor. If this car was worth 30,000 euros, now it is worth 35,000 euros with the increase in prices. You could delay 30,000 in the Treasury before, how much can you delay now? 30,000 as well. With your money, you can also buy less but still on the same scale. No bonus has been updated, nothing has been updated. The maternity discount is still 1,200 euros, which should have increased at the same rate as the prices.

– How does the interprofessional minimum wage affect small businesses?

– It has a drag effect. If you need to raise the salary of the apprentice from 600 to 1,000, you need to increase the salary of the remaining employees of the company. This eventually leads the small businessman to give up on the weakest and most vulnerable link in the beginning because he cannot afford the increase in recruitment costs. Is the businessman bad? No, there’s just no room for maneuver. An increase in the minimum wage can raise wage costs by up to 20%, meaning either prices go up or the worker who can’t make a living is fired.

– But until the last quarter, Active Population Survey (EPA) employment figures were rising.

-It’s a lie. This is a trap. The EPA report is a log you need to know how to interpret. The report looks at the number of active contracts. Since November, the recruitment of permanent full-time workers has fallen and there has been a large increase in part-time or permanent discontinuous contracts. This is another reduction, but it is labor. Everyone does. You will continue to work until eight o’clock, but I am only releasing you for four hours. If you look at EPA data, you’ll see that the volume of working hours has dropped by 10% or 12%. Fraud is encouraged out of necessity. Once the box reaches zero, nothing else can be done.

How is Asturias?

-Asturias is losing a hundred companies a month, 1200 a year, which exacerbates the population problem of a region with a fabric of small companies. The problem is that big companies don’t care about labor reform, they outsource, they don’t bore their workers. Now put it all in a bottle and shake it. I assure you the cocktail will eventually explode.

-When?

-Soon or later. We’ve been saying for a month and a half that this year will be worse than 2021. We have processed 67% of ERTE made in SMEs in Spain, we have data. We did not fail any of our predictions. I said in October the EPA was going to go down and down in the first quarter of 2022. We don’t have a magic ball, but we have access to data from one and a half million SMEs from agencies in Spain, and the estimates are not good at all.

-So where are we going?

– We are going downhill, to mass SME closure, a very high default rate in banking, a huge delay in payments, absolute chaos in terms of taxes. If we continue like this, the general budget expenditures of the state will increase uncontrollably and therefore revenues will have to increase. Also, we already know how this works. The state does not fight the very rich, nor can it blame the very poor for not paying. In the end, it puts pressure on the small businessman who is middle class.

– European funds would reach SMEs, are they coming?

They failed in the first episode, they’re failing now, and I’m taking the risk of saying they’re going to fail the last episode too. It will be as in a single window: neither window, nor single. This will be a fiasco. Even if it’s a marketing campaign, they’re not made for small businesses. You just need to go to the fund’s own legislation. Regulations say you cannot reside in a tax haven. How many Spanish bakeries are residing in a tax haven?

Aren’t they designed for little ones?

-Designed for large companies. Regulations of the funds require, for example, that it is not owed to Social Security. So which company did not go into debt during the pandemic? Just the big one and luck. They want the salaries of the executive staff not to be increased… When the pandemic came in SMEs, the businessman did not reduce his salary, he took it away from him. Now if you give me a grant, won’t you let me take it back? They set up some checks you must comply with in order to become an Excel engineer… Also, it is the first State to receive European funding. It amounts to 25 of every 100 Euros that the government gives you. In the end, it’s not even worth asking for them between checks and requirements.

– Anything to put on credit?

–Digital kit, that is, they have been very useful helpers and they reach companies very well. I hope management learns and follows this path, otherwise we will go bankrupt. In the tax and aid distribution framework, there are local organizations and autonomies that do things well. I’m sorry to be so hunky, sorry, but that’s what happened.