Mercats de Barcelona

Barcelona received the 2021 National Prize for Internal Trade this afternoon. The Councilor for Commerce and Markets, Montserrat Ballarin, was in charge of collecting the award at the event that was held this afternoon in Madrid. It is an award that the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism grants to Barcelona in recognition of its work in the recovery and promotion of the city’s commerce -which also includes the 43 municipal markets- included in the Commercial Urban Renewal Plan.

In the category of city councils with more than 25,000 inhabitants, the award has recognized the initiatives framed in the municipal program “Barcelona never stops”, which wants to reactivate the city’s economy with shock measures and long-term tools to regenerate its economic and social network. It has also awarded the actions of the Strategic Market Plan 2015-2025, which aims mainly to promote the development of new technologies from the following axes:

• Technological improvements for a better development of commerce, through the promotion of initiatives for the digitization of small businesses in order to stimulate and strengthen them. With these actions, the 43 municipal markets have a fiber optic installation, the management of workers has been streamlined through new technologies and new initiatives have been generated to further digitize the municipal markets.
• The rehabilitation, modernization and adaptation of municipal markets to new technologies, through the deployment of telecommunications infrastructures, the installation of sensors and digital capacity control cameras, a new incident management tool, the expansion of the network of screens and the content management tool or the placement of lockers for the collection of the purchase.
• Actions on commercial premises outside the municipal markets to promote their use, which are included in the “Impulsem el que fas” projects, which subsidize 80% of business projects that involve the purchase or rental of premises at street level, or “Amunt persianes”, which buys empty premises to create a public exchange.
• Actions to support young entrepreneurs in the trade sector and generational change, with a line of advice for young people under 35 to promote their business ideas. In addition, ten million euros have been set aside for six private venture capital funds to drive innovative start-ups in the city.

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