Tenerife Licita, a mixed consortium of the Chamber of Commerce of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and the Cabildo of Tenerife
In 2021, a specific plan titled “United Nations Access Program” was launched in Tenerife.
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A total of 4.615 Spanish companies, which represents 1,3% of the total, are among the nearly 350.000 companies around the world that have opted to be suppliers of United Nations. Currently, the main multilateral organization carries out contracts worth 29.500 billion dollars (about 27.500 billion euros), which is equivalent to three times the budget of the Canary Islands Government for the same period of time and has grown 67% in the last five years.
The demand is great and companies of all types and sizes are needed, both for equipment and construction or services. In Tenerife there are already 60 companies that have joined this trend, of which almost half have managed to become official suppliers thanks to the help of Tenerife Tender, a mixed consortium of the Chamber of Commerce of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and the Cabildo of Tenerife which aims to support companies on the island so that they can participate in public tenders from multilateral organizations, such as the UN.
The Canary Islands have two components that are interesting for the United Nations. On the one hand, it has a super food such as gofio and the second advantage is its location.
United Nations Access Program
In 2021, a specific plan was launched in Tenerife titled “United Nations Access Program.” The objective was for companies on the island to be able to go to the more than 41 agencies that the organization has, although only five account for almost 70% of the total (Unicef, the World Food Program, the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Services Projects and the two United Nations Development Programs (UNDP and UNPD)). According to official data from the agency, SMEs signed contracts worth more than 6.300 billion dollars.
The president of the Foreign Trade Commission of the Chamber of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Arturo Escuder, encouraged companies to participate in this type of competition, which has two great advantages. The first is that payment is assured from the moment the project draft begins, so there is no risk of non-payment. The second is that it is a sector that is not subject to the economic or political crises of the countries. In fact, he remembers that “when most businesses were under serious restrictions due to the COVID pandemic, multilateral organizations substantially increased their budgets.”
For her part, the acting CEO of Foreign Action of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Liskel Alvarez, highlighted the importance of this training initiative “through which companies are advised and accompanied in this internationalizing process”. Álvarez explained that in addition to facilitating the registration procedures in the entity's databases, companies receive a visit at their headquarters from a specialized consulting firm that diagnoses the strengths of each business. He also receives advice and guidance on the more than fifty specialized organizations within the UN that he can contact, such as the FAO, the OIM, the UNESCO o UNICEF, among others. “At the end of the training, a detailed report is delivered that outlines the roadmap to follow to increase their chances of success and be awarded international public contracts,” he added.
Canary Islands, a region with advantages
The Canary Islands have two components that are interesting for the United Nations. On the one hand, it has a super food, such as gofio, which has already been tested for several decades in the south of Algeria as an instrument to fight hunger. Recently, the Islands received a visit from two officials from the World Food Program, because they wanted to acquire 1.000 tons of this traditional Canarian product. The second advantage is in its location. From New York, the headquarters of the Agency, they see the Canary Islands (a European territory) near where some of the blue helmet missions are located in Africa. These detachments require all types of products, from the tires of their vehicles to fire extinguishers or personnel vaccines, among others.
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