Mercadona Boss: “Spain Must Improve Productivity”
March 4th, 2010
The Valencian supermarket chain Mercadona has posted a net profit of 270 million euros in 2009, representing a decrease of 16% over the previous year, but the company maintained an increase in gross sales levels to 15,505 million euros, up 1% on 2008.
At a press conference, in which the company presented their 2009 financial results, Juan Roig, the president of Mercadona, suggested that the crisis is not over because the standard of living and productivity “are two elements that need to balance”.
However, the company boss acknowledged that his mood is “quite optimistic” in relation to the current economic situation. “They’re hard times in Spain but we all have to raise our level of productivity,” he said.
Spain has experienced “15 years of growth with a very high standard of living” and many people “have no knowledge of financial crises”. Up until 2007 “the standard of living was high and productivity was low”, but this was partly thanks to “money coming from outside, and the housing boom.”
Today, the situation has changed, and he explained that Spain “will and must maintain high living standards, but productivity has dropped, and neither the money that was coming into Spain or the housing boom is present.” Roig warned that if the Spanish are “not capable of raising productivity, living standards will fall and the country will be poorer”.
“This is going to happen whether we like it or not. We improve productivity or lower our standard of living. If we can improve our productivity, we will continue to improve our standard of living and be a country like we have been in the last decade,” concluded the Mercadona’s ardent president.
When asked how the government can help a companies like Mercadona, given the current crisis, he advocated “we should improve rather than be subsidized. I do not believe in subsidies, I think more about improving absenteeism than in seeking subsidies.”
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