The Diplomat
The Spanish Exporters and Investors Club has called on the Government to design economic policies that favor the sustained growth over time of companies that can achieve significant volumes of exports.
Large exporting companies generate “international competitive advantages to the country and to the productive and exporting ecosystem of the regions where they are based”, warned the Exporters’ Club last Thursday in a statement. Therefore, through its Committee of Reflection on Internationalization, the Club has advised the Executive to study “transversal actions to promote mergers or to eliminate barriers and stimulate growth with tax, labor and risk coverage incentives, among other measures”.
The Committee for Reflection on Internationalization has promoted a study that characterizes the role of large exporting companies in Spain based on AEAT-Customs data. The authors are Professors Juan de Lucio (UAH), Raúl Mínguez (Spanish Chamber of Commerce and Nebrija University), Asier Minondo (Deusto University) and Francisco Requena (Valencia University).
This study reveals that the weight of large exporting companies in the value of national aggregate exports is very high and stable over time. The thousand largest exporters account for 67% of total exports and the hundred largest, 38%. “These proportions have remained unchanged over the last 20 years,” says the Exporters’ Club. Besides, it continues, “there is a certain rotation, although low, of companies in the positions with the highest export volume”, so that 365 companies “have concentrated approximately 45% of the total exports of goods in the period 1997-2021”.
On the other hand, “the exporters that end up occupying top positions make a positive and significant contribution to the growth of Spain’s exports” and, in fact, “47% of the growth of exports in the last 20 years is due to the hundred largest exporters”. Therefore, “Spain would lose the comparative advantage in 45% of exports if the main exporter in each sector disappeared”. The study also shows that the number of exporters has quadrupled in the last 25 years, to 235,000. However, “the vast majority export very small volumes”.
In addition, the study points out that, together with the policies that promote small and medium-sized companies to start exporting with the aim that some of them reach large export volumes, it is also necessary to design specific actions focused on attracting large international companies that develop their export activity from Spain. In this sense, the authors state that foreign investment is a great boost to exports.
In the short term, the authors of the report also recommend the implementation of actions that provide stability to larger companies, that the right context be created to produce the knock-on effects (both in goods and services companies) and that the diversification of the exporting business fabric be promoted.
“Small changes in economic policy that affect the behavior of larger firms can have important effects, while more extensive policies with an impact on many small firms may have less aggregate effects if none of these small firms manage to reach large sizes,” the authors of the study point out.
The Spanish Exporters and Investors Club is a multisectoral business association whose objective is to represent and defend the interests of internationally active Spanish companies. The worldwide turnover of the Club’s members is equivalent to 20% of Spain’s GDP. They have some 800,000 employees and their investments abroad represent 50% of the national total.
