The Diplomat
37.6% of Spanish companies with more than 50 employees in the industrial, commercial, and non-financial services sectors participate in global value chains, especially within the European Union, which was the most frequent destination for all foreign operations carried out by these companies in 2023.
These are the main conclusions of the new European statistics on Global Value Chains (EGVC), published this Thursday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), which measures the degree of globalization of the Spanish economy through the range of cross-border activities necessary to bring a product or service from its conception to the final consumers, passing through the different stages of production and delivery.
The research focused on 19,075 non-agricultural companies that carry out industrial, commercial, or non-financial services activities with 50 or more employees. Of the total number of companies analyzed, 7,157 (37.6%) reported participating in global value chains, compared to 11,918 (62.5%) that did not.
The most frequent destination for buying and selling goods and services abroad was the European Union: 5,250 companies bought and 4,667 sold goods there, while 1,472 acquired services and 1,178 supplied them.
Of the total number of companies that outsourced their activities outside of Spain, 48.3% belonged to the industrial sector, 41.4% to the services sector, and 10.3% to the retail sector. 89.7% of the companies that carried out some international outsourcing between 2021 and 2023 were large companies (250 or more employees), and the remaining 10.3% were medium-sized companies (50 to 249 employees).
The three main reasons that motivated companies to outsource part of their production process outside of Spain were the reduction of labor costs, regulations abroad that favored the company, and the reduction of costs other than labor costs.
Conversely, the three biggest drawbacks that companies identified for outsourcing outside of Spain were legal or administrative barriers, tax issues, and uncertainty about the quality of the products or services to be supplied abroad. In addition, the increase in raw material costs related to energy supply was the constraint that most significantly impacted their global value chains during the three-year period.
