Local members of the Spanish Association of Footwear Component Companies (AEC) have reacted with caution to the promise of a financial support package from the regional government of Valencia.

The Valencian region includes the province of Alicante, where the great majority of AEC’s 280 members are based. At a recent meeting in Elche with representatives of the association, the region’s minister for the economy, Gerardo Camps, said the executive was planning a similar support package to one it put together last year for local textile manufacturers. However, Mr Camps insisted he and his colleagues were studying carefully the specific needs of the footwear sector and would come up with “a made-to-measure finance plan” to help it.

The association’s press spokesman, Manuel Matarredona, has told www.footwearbiz.com that local manufacturers are, for the moment anyway, treating the proposed financial assistance programme as nothing more than an electoral promise, designed to win votes in the regional elections in May. “There’s nothing definite about it,” he said. “It’s just a proposal for the future.”

If the plan does come to fruition, Mr Matarredona said he believed footwear manufacturers in other parts of Spain were unlikely to complain that their Valencian counterparts were receiving an unfair advantage. Spain’s federal system meant other regional governments were at liberty to provide similar support to their local companies if they wanted to.