The region’s food and beverage sector increased its sales figure by 15% last year, reaching 4,851 million euros and becoming the only activity, together with regional furniture, to increase its sales in 2020, a marked year for the pandemic.
The Minister for Business, Employment, Universities and Spokesperson, Valle Miguélez, underlined these figures during her visit to the companies in the Region of Murcia that are participating these days in the Anuga fair, with which she agreed that this event “is the best scenario to value the reality of a sector that has managed to resist during the pandemic and that is confirmed as a very important industry for the Region “, while predicting” a medium-term future with a lot of room to consolidate and reinforce this increase”.
Adaptability
The regional business fabric of this sector reaches 1,086 companies, which represents 3.7% of the national total, and employs more than 22,000 people, 30% of the industrial total. If agriculture is added to the sales figure for the food industry, it exceeds 8,000 million euros, which is 25% of the regional Gross Domestic Product.
In this sense, the Minister, who was accompanied by the Minister of Water, Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and the Environment, Antonio Luengo, stressed that the agri-food sector “constitutes one of the spearheads of the regional economy. With a solid tradition, it has known how to adapt to the globalization of markets. In fact, in recent years it has increased its internationalization process, which attests to its capacity for competitiveness in dozens of very different markets, something only feasible due to its high capacity for innovation ”.
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