Improve savings taxation so that Spain is less dependent on financial markets when it comes to balancing your public accounts and gaining investment capacity. This is the message that Ángel Martínez-Aldama, president of Inverco, conveyed this Tuesday during his speech at the III Active Management Forum, organized by elEconomista.es.
Martínez-Aldama recalled that Aging report 2024, the triennial report of the European Commission in which the impact of population aging on the economies of the Member States is analyzed, presented an unfavorable outlook for Spain, predicting that must devote 3.5 points more of GDP to public pensions over the next two decades, or around 51 billion euros, “ to what we already pay, to maintain or be able to pay the promised benefits, compared to a European average of 0.4 points”, underlined the president of Inverco. Currently, Spain devotes around 12% of GDP to maintaining pensions.
A deficit in public finances which makes us more vulnerable”, this is why we must encourage “clearly and much more” the taxation of savings, as well as financial education.
In this sense, Martínez-Aldama stressed that the reform of pension systems carried out by the former Minister of Labor and current President of the Bank of Spain, José Luis Escriva, “did not go in the right direction”, so “after four years it’s worth sitting down and analyzing what its effects have been.
And according to the association of investment and pension fund managers, the result since the implementation of measures to encourage employment plans, known as the second pillar, is that “10.5 billion over these four years, which until 2020 was devoted to long-term savings via the third pillar [el individual] they didn’t leave [al reducirse la cantidad máxima de aportaciones]. We don’t know if they were intended for consumption, or if they went to unpaid current accounts, deposits… But we cannot miss this opportunity to have greater coverage in the third pillar “, underlined Martínez-Aldama.
For the president of Inverco, more incentives are needed, both fiscal and other types, which serve to debate and negotiate in the collective negotiations of social agents, since the reform carried out so far “has not had the effects that the government hoped for” stressed.
Investment value
For the president of Inverco, improving the taxation of savings implies not only having a liquidity cushion to maintain pensions but also acquiring the sovereignty and independence of the country.
“The role of active management is evident in that We currently manage the savings of 14 million Spaniards, or more than 830 billion euros. both for pension schemes and for national and international investment funds registered in Spain for their marketing. AND We have around 150 billion euros invested in Spanish assets in Spain, which shows that savings are a source of development of the local economy.and that countries that promote and develop their savings obtain dividends in terms of sovereignty and independence to manage their investments and tax collection,” Martínez-Aldama emphasized.
All this in a European context where numerous reports, such as that of Draghi or Letta, recommend the development of financial markets and the improvement of access for individual investors to achieve “strategic autonomy”.
“A country that does not have or does not generate long-term savings has a weakness in terms of investments which becomes evident whenever there are problems or crises in the debt markets,” he said. -he emphasized.
