Ambitious plan to kick-start economies of Spain’s holiday islands Mallorca, Ibiza and Menorca

THE Balearic government has ambitious plans for kick-starting the islands’ coronavirus crisis-battered economies.
The administration has passed a decree aimed at generating some €3,500 million and creating tens of thousands of jobs.
Renovation and energy efficiency improvement projects which would in normal circumstances take a long time to get up and running will, for example, be speeded up. In addition, the decree authorises the extension and reconversion of hotels into officially protected properties, health facilities or investigation centres, while environmental prohibitions like on one-use plastic planned for the start of 2021 are to be put back.
The idea is not to add to the complications of an already very complex situation.
Commenting in an interview with Spanish press this weekend, Balearic President Francine Armengol stressed the urgent need to reactivate the archipelago’s economy as quickly as possible to prevent what the regional government has predicted could be a 30 per cent fall in GDP due to the paralysis of economic activity.
“It has to be made possible for people who would have worked in the hospitality sector to go to other sectors to work and not lose these jobs”, the Balearic president insisted, pointing to the construction sector as the one in particular which needs to be strengthened this summer.
Armengol also expressed the hope that if all goes well, a certain amount of activity in the tourism sector will be able to get underway from July onwards.