The Catalan SMEs They dedicate an average of 41.1 hours per week to managing procedures with the public administration, which already has 70% of the documents it requests from companies and which takes an average of 136 days to resolve the requests, according to a study by Pimec.
This is how the president of Pimec explained it, Antoni Cañeteand the president of the SME Observatory, Oriol Amatat the press conference to present the study Bureaucracy and business competitiveness: Diagnosis and proposals.
The study analyzes the effectiveness, efficiency and quality of public administration in Catalonia and Spain as a whole, focusing on business competitiveness, especially in SMEs.
Through surveys of 700 associates, the employers’ association has detected that the main administrative obstacles are the excessive bureaucracythe long processing times, the inter-administrative lack of coordination and the regulatory complexity.
Specifically, 85% of companies have difficulties keeping up to date with regulations and 48% have suffered coordination problems between administrations, which for 20% is a “very important obstacle.”
In addition, SMEs have taken an average of 166 days to collect a subsidy since the resolution. On the other hand, 80% of small businesses believe that the time it takes to complete a procedure is “excessive or very long.”
Don’t fall into “Groundhog Day”
Cañete has regretted that the time invested in paperwork It is “a time practically equivalent to a worker’s weekly shift,” and he has advocated not falling into “groundhog day,” literally.
He has assured that bureaucracy damages the competitiveness and innovation of companies. He has exemplified this with the case of a company from Baix Camp (Tarragona), which took three years to receive a license and then could no longer carry out its activity.
“Every time there is an electoral process, administrative simplification and debureaucratization and the single window are in the programs, but we are where we were a long time ago,” he criticized.
Asked about the administration reform who wants to execute the GovernmentCañete has opted to move from words to “concrete and immediate action” and has reiterated that a country cannot function without Budgets.
Pending digitization
The study identifies that there is great potential for the digitalization of procedures and the simplification of processes, but only if these actions are accompanied by a structural review of regulations and procedures.
In this sense, Amat has presented the actions proposed by the study, which include the creation of a single window, the digital transformationthe training of administrative personnel and administrative simplification, especially in small municipalities and rural areas.
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