Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) could generate up to 42,000 jobs over the next four years, against a backdrop of changing the production model, compared with a loss of about 60,000 jobs a year that will occur if the governing party does not rectify the plan of budget cuts planned for the sector.
This was highlighted during the presentation of the report 'The cultural and creative industries. A key sector of the new economy ', prepared by the Chair of Cultural Industries of the IDEAS Foundation, directed by Javier Bonilla. Bonilla is one of the authora of the report together with Reyes Maroto, senior researcher in the area of Economics, Sustainability and Welfare of the IDEAS Foundation, and Casilda Cabrerizo, research assistant in the same area.
According to the report, in 2009 the activity of the sector in Spain produced (latest data available) more than 41,000 million euros and over 625,000 jobs, 3.1 percent of the total, having become an industry of high strategic capacity to revitalize economic activity and employment.
According to Maroto, tbeyond he direct contribution of the sector to GDP and employment, the CCI are important drivers of many other sectors such as education, tourism, manufacturing or research. Thus, according to estimates by the IDEAS Foundation, these indirect effects of the CCI in terms of GDP would reach 10,000 million euros, and generate over 180,000 quality jobs in related sectors, which should further increase its contribution to GDP up to 5.2 percent of GDP.
In the overview of the report, Bonilla identified several factors that make Spain a country with enormous potential to generate employment and economic activity in the sector of the CCI. The first is the country's cultural wealth, occupying, for example, number 2, after Italy, in the list of countries with sites and monuments declared World Heritage Site.
Second is the importance of language, as the Spanish language provides a competitive advantage to the Spanish cultural industries, as reflected by the increase the number of students studying Spanish. Third, in Spain the level of participation and activity consumption is still below the EU average.
Finally, there is a convergence process in the production, distribution and consumption of culture, which today form part of a dynamic global market, and where Spanish companies have still room for improvement through specialization and internationalization of their activities.
There are still elements that could limit future growth of the sector, among which are the problems of access to funding by cultural small businesses, still limited integration between culture, creativity and business knowledge, the centralization of the business culture, regulation and lack of regulations governing the new rights and the adaptation of existing information society.
In this context, the IDEAS Foundation report raises a number of recommendations to strengthen and revive the sector. Among these measures, the document committed to modernizing the educational programs to adapt to the transformation of the sector, improve the training of professionals, to undertake the "multilocation" cultural and into the economics of globalization, promoting cultural clustering and creative lines of credit and tax credits for those SMEs connected to the CCI, to exploit the synergies of public and private, and finally, protecting intellectual property.