(Photo:  Gibraltar Chronicle)

Chamber President Christian Hernandez, along with fellow board directors George Dyke and George Desoisa, met with Carlos Fenoy, President of the Camara de Comercio del Campo de Gibraltar, Manuel Tinoco and Sebastián Fernández, at the Gibraltar Chamber on Tuesday 13th September.  The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the implications of June’s EU referendum result for businesses on both sides of the frontier and explore how best to meet the forthcoming challenges.

The meeting was held in the spirit of open cooperation and a wish to ensure that members of both organisations can work together for the benefit of communities in Gibraltar as well as the Campo.

A number of possible initiatives were discussed and these will be explored and developed further in the coming months. Although negotiations between the UK and the European Commission have not yet begun, both organisations recognise the importance and value of continuing to generate jobs and economic growth in the region and all efforts must be made to encourage this in the future.

[box] Background information

The results of the Economic Impact Study which was published by the Gibraltar Chamber last year and based on 2013 data found that Gibraltar purchased £380m worth of goods and services from Spain and that Gibraltar businesses accounted one out of every four jobs in the Campo region. Currently (June 2016), half of Gibraltar’s workforce crosses the frontier from Spain each day to go to work in Gibraltar businesses. Of these approximately 7,000 are Spanish nationals and the remaining 5,000 are other EU nationals. The wages earned by these cross frontier workers are largely spent in Spain.[/box]