President CDTI: Catalonia is the autonomy that receives more funds by far

Catalonia represents "the main autonomous community" of the country in receiving funds from the Center for Industrial Technological Development (CDTI) in the last five years "with several points of difference of the following", obtaining 20% ​​of the total investment.

Francisco Marín, director general of the CDTI explained to EFE in an interview with EFE, who referred to the contribution of this organization, under the Ministry of Economy, communities such as Catalonia, which from January to September this year received 72 million of euros to finance 142 projects, with a total investment of 97 million euros, which represents 14% of the total.

Asked about the situation in Catalonia and a hypothetical declaration of independence, he said that he sees "no risk, because it will not happen." "How could something economically unsustainable happen," he said.

In matters of an international nature, he believes that Brexit has had an "impact" on Spanish companies that have obtained funding from CDTI, especially when it comes to seeking partners, since they "do not want to collaborate" with entities that "will not tomorrow being "in the EU; "that's pure pragmatism".

However, the election of Donald Trump as US president has had no impact. "I have not seen any gesture."

Marín, a telecommunications engineer who heads the CDTI since February 2015, considers the role of this organization that supports R & D & I in companies with financing, advice, "which even has more objective value than money ", and also through the help of internationalization.

It aims to "overcome the crisis bump" that "began at the end of the first decade of 2000", since the CDTI lost "half of its companies", ie "stopped doing R & D + 50 percent "of its customer base. Since 2014, a total of 1,520 companies have received funding from this body.

The CDTI, which this year turns 40, has financed projects since its inception with 14.8 billion euros, an important amount, considering how it started with a bank loan "50 million pesetas" (300,000 euros), he explained.

The budget of this body in 2017 has increased by 25%, moving from 739 million euros in 2016 to 992 in 2017.

He praised the decline in delinquency, which currently stands at 7.2 percent.

As reported, the CDTI finances the projects through loans at 0% interest with a term generally of 10 years; and also in a non-reimbursable form, which in some cases can reach up to 33% of the funding.

"The main R & D & I problem is that sometimes an equally important project does not develop due to fear of failure," according to Marín, who added that the role of the CDTI is to collaborate so that this "factor of inhibition is less.

He also referred to the role of Spain as a "powerful player" in the European Space Agency, chaired until 2019 by the Minister of Economy, Luis de Guindos. "Today Spain can make a satellite, which was impossible 10 years ago."

The budget committed for Spain for the European Space Agency, where the CDTI represents Spanish companies, "is not pecton minuta", 1.400 million euros until 2023.

On the return of the investment of this organism, it has affirmed that in the Horizon 2020 - is the Program for the Investigation and the Innovation in the European Union for the period 2014-2020 - had marked the objective of that outside the 9, 4 percent and, to date, "we are at 12.6, three points above expectations," he praised.

With regard to the contribution to companies of Madrid by the CDTI, from January to September 2017, it has stood at 46 million euros to finance 89 projects, with an overall investment of 64 million euros.