The bulk of this amount will go to improving the employability of Aragonese workers and promoting hiring and labor insertion through the Aragonese Employment Institute (INAEM), which increases its budget to more than 124 million euros (5.06% more). Councilor Marta Gastón explained the details of these accounts this Tuesday in the Commission of Finance, Budgets and Public Administration of the Cortes de Aragón, where she stressed the importance for the economy of the approval “in time and form” of the Budgets, which provides “stability and confidence, the best recipe for growth”.
“Even with positive data, employment continues to be the department’s priority. INAEM’s budget grows by 5.06% in view of the challenge of achieving ‘full employment’ in 2024”, highlighted Gastón, who focused on the importance of “knowledge and training as pillars to achieve more and better employment”. In this sense, the Minister of Economy pointed out that the department she heads is going to allocate nearly 50 million euros to this matter, both through INAEM and its Center for Advanced Technologies, and through the specialization programs promoted in collaboration with the School of Industrial Organization, the different chairs with the University of Zaragoza and new calls for training in equality, promotion of health at work and prevention of occupational hazards.
These last new lines, to which Gastón referred, will allow companies to offer training in equality to raise awareness among their workers in this area, to favor access to management positions for their female workers and to facilitate conciliation, as well as to promote health at work and to encourage the prevention of occupational hazards among the group of self-employed workers.
In INAEM’s budget for 2022 -which includes 11 million euros from the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism (RRM), within the Next Generation-EU Funds- the amount allocated both to training for unemployed and employed workers (+4.94%) and to actions to promote employment (+18.30%) increases with respect to this year, stimulating hiring and reinforcing the attention to the most vulnerable groups.
Among the active employment policies included in INAEM’s budget, innovative initiatives stand out, such as the Pro Digital program, included within the current Aragonese Plan for the Improvement of Youth Employability (PAMEJ), which will have a budget of 5 million Euros and which will allow promoting digital training and encouraging quality hiring and entrepreneurship in this field among Aragonese people up to 35 years of age.
Investment incentives
Among the challenges of the department, in addition to the objective of achieving ‘full employment’, is to achieve greater availability of industrial land to facilitate the arrival of new business projects which, as Gastón recalled, are “generators of employment, wealth and real engines” of development. In this area, the Minister of Economy, Planning and Employment stated that there are “good expectations with names and surnames” that she hopes will soon materialize and be made public, and she also pointed out the importance of stability and the proper functioning of social dialogue in our Autonomous Community for the arrival of new investments.
In order to support new investments and promote competitiveness and business activity, and consequently also employment, the Department of Economy, Planning and Employment will allocate 6.3 million euros to the payment of direct aid for R&D projects in strategic sectors and will complement the regional incentives for the arrival of new investments in our territory with a new call for this type of subsidies of 2.5 million euros. In addition, it will continue to support the internationalization of our business fabric through Aragón Exterior (a public company for which it will increase its contribution to 1.1 million euros) and collaboration agreements with CEOE and CEPYME; and it will reinforce support for financing for self-employed SMEs and social economy entities through AVALIA and SODIAR, including a new specific fund for innovative startups.
For the promotion of cooperatives in our territory, a new line of aid will be provided with 165,000 euros and, as in previous years, a call is also planned to subsidize the conditioning of temporary workers’ accommodation in farms and the amount to be allocated to the Special Fund for Second Chance to finance the costs of technical assistance for the study of the possibilities to provide viability to the economic activity or the study of insolvency and formalization of the necessary documentation for out-of-court mediation of self-employed workers is maintained.
During this next fiscal year, the development and implementation of the Entrepreneurship Platform will also continue, with €84,480 for the multi-year contract, which has already been awarded and is expected to begin to be executed in 2021 to be completed by the end of 2022.
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