«The RIC is today useless for Canarian companies»
The Reserve for Investments in the Canary Islands (RIC) has ceased to be a useful instrument for Canarian businessmen for several reasons, ranging from legal uncertainty to the short application period that leads many companies to rule out its use. This was revealed during the breakfast-colloquium organized by the APD to analyze the need to modernize the REF and update its incentives and fiscal instruments.
«The RIC is useless today. Small and medium-sized companies, which is almost 90% of the productive fabric, do not use it at all,” stated the general director of the Lopesan Hotel Division, José Ignacio Alba, emphatically, adding that for this reason RIC collective investment vehicles. As he explained, in order to apply it it is necessary to have up to three tax advisors and the deadlines are very short. «The three-year application is useless. It is impossible to develop a hotel in that time. It is impossible to develop a great project. You have to request an extension. “We have to rethink it,” said Alba.
According to their estimates, this year between 700 and 800 million of the RIC will remain unapplied.
In this sense, the commissioner of the REF, José Ramón Barrera, the RIC requires “review and analysis.” “The RIC helped a lot in its first years but now we have to open our minds to go to a model that allows us to be fiscally competitive to achieve leadership and be economically competitive,” he indicated. At the event it was clear and it was defended ad nauseam that the REF is not a privilege but a right. «We have to start changing the semantics. “It is not a little help for the Canary Islands,” said Alba.
