Footwear firms "still waiting" for government help
11/09/2008
The mayor of Petrer, a footwear manufacturing town in the province of Alicante, has accused the Spanish government of failing to follow up on an aid plan for the shoe industry announced a year ago.
The government announced the plan last autumn, saying that it would make €49 million available to make sure the Spanish footwear manufacturing industry, the second biggest in Europe, lost no ground in the global market. Footwear firms would be able to use the money for research and development and training, and to boost their presence overseas.
Now the mayor of Petrer, Pascual Díaz, has complained that footwear companies have seen no sign of the money. He said all there had been was a degree of funding for new industrial complexes, but he argued that this was of no use to footwear manufacturers. "The idea of building a new complex is to attract new companies to an area," he argued, "and that's fine. But it's obvious that the new facilities have to be open to all business sectors and not just footwear. Our sector is in crisis and it needs more than half-baked solutions from the government."
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