As every year, Ametic, the technological employer, marks every year the beginning of the course with the celebration of the meeting of the digital economy and the telecommunications held in Santander. In the absence of the Minister of the Branch, the Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence had no choice, to exercise a obligatory government representative to inaugurate the event.
In a presentation more typical of an electoral mythist than a professional meeting like the one he was, María González Veracruz defended the public-private collaboration to achieve the challenges that the country ahead. Veracruz announced at the meeting the implementation of aid of 87 million of the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) to promote smart cities and territories. “It’s about continuing to help – because we have already come from five Red.es calls of 200 million euros – to continue financing local entities, but also other supralocal entities, such as autonomous communities and improve technological infrastructure, to channel data towards economic development and to implement advanced solutions such as artificial intelligence or digital twins,” he said.
The opening ceremony also had the participation of the mayor of Santander, Gema Equal and the president of Cantabria María José Sáenz de Buruaga as well as the CEO of Santander, Ignacio Juliá, and the rector of the UIMP, Carlos Andradas.
In the opening ceremony, the president of AMETIC, Paco Hortigüela, reviewed the great milestones that have been announced and discussed in the 39 editions of the Meeting of the Digital Economy and Telecommunications and stressed that this year “we see that digitalization is playing an increasingly important role in competitiveness, geopolitics, strategic autonomy, defense, social impact, social impact, in short, in short, order World Cup. “The president of the employer also pointed out that” to overcome the challenges ahead it is necessary to improve our competitiveness at the same time that we use the opportunities offered by digitalization to reduce economic, social and territorial gaps, favoring inclusion, accessibility and independent life, guaranteeing the sustainability of the welfare state. “
The status of the ICT sector in Spain
One of the main attractions of the Santander meeting is to know the data of the state of the Spanish ICT sector in the presentation of the annual barometer. In this case, the data demonstrates the growing power that this sector has in the national economy. Thus, according to the data presented, the digital sector meant in 2024 26% of GDP, which represents an increase of 7.4% compared to the previous year.
Paco Hortigüela, President of Ametic: “To overcome the challenges ahead it is necessary to improve our competitiveness”
The billing volume of the digital technological sector continues to grow for the fourth year, exceeding the global growth rates of the Spanish economy. In 2024 it has reached a record: 138,205 million euros, which represents a growth of +5.6% compared to that of the previous year. The segment that records greater growth is information technologies that accumulates 52.6% of the total sector billing. On the other hand communications, digital content and Telcom-Electronic suppose 21.7%, 14.2% and 11.5% respectively.
Barometer indicators are also optimistic. In this regard, the sector -character indicators register an outstanding growth of jobs in 2024 when reaching 722,990 employees, a +7.8% compared to the previous year.
The meeting has been closed with the participation of more than 400 attendees and 120 speakers that in addition to the different traditional presentations held during the morning have been able to attend the “Ametic afternoons” where debates have been organized around strategic themes such as defense, collaboration with Latin America, the impact of digitalization in society, the development of intelligent cities and the future of innovation ecosystems
