The Catalan Finance Minister affirms that the savings bank reform will not affect their social work

Barcelona (ACN).- The reform of the savings bank sector will not harm the social work that these particular financial entities have been carrying out for decades. This statement was made by the microeconomics professor Andreu Mas-Colell, who is the Catalan Minister for Economy and Knowledge, also in charge of universities. Mas-Colell made this statement at the ceremony in which the savings bank La Caixa and the Catalan Association of Public Universities gave 20 grants for research projects. In fact, Mas-Colell said that, once all the sector changes will be made, the financial entities’ social work would be even strengthened. “I want to tell you that you should not worry, the deep streams go in the direction of the social work”, he stated. According to Mas-Colell, once the current savings banks are transformed into regular banks, the issuing social works “will not compete to re-invest” into financial institutions and thus they will have “greater degrees of freedom”. Therefore, once the adjustment will be digested, the social work could even be increased.

Mas-Colell made this statement at an event at the CosmoCaixa, where La Caixa and the Association of Catalan Public Universities gave 20 grants to research projects to avoid a brain drain during the current crisis. The Catalan Minister thanked the support of the private sector now that the public institutions are “object of more limitations”. Through the RecerCaixa programme, the Catalan savings bank funded 20 projects with a total of 1.4 million euros. A total of 461 projects applied to receive this grant but only 20 were awarded. It is the first year of this project, which aims at fostering research and avoids the need to go abroad looking for funding or research opportunities. Most of the awarded projects are on social sciences, but there are also on life sciences. For instance, one deals with factors leading to child obesity.