The Governing Board of the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT) held its founding meeting this Wednesday. This meeting marks the effective launch of the entity in a very short period after the approval of its statute by the Council of Ministers on July 16, in line with the need for agility and adaptability required by market response times in the technology sector.
According to the statutes, the presidency of the Governing Board belongs to the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructures, María González Veracruz. In addition, the Board has a vice president, a role held by the former sole administrator of Semys and head of the PERTE Chip, Jaime Martorell, with the presence of the Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence, Mayte Ledo, and ten other prestigious members from ministries related to the entity’s competencies.
At this first meeting, the Governing Board appointed Javier Ponce as director general, taking the reins of the SETT. Ponce was previously deputy general director of SEMYS and has extensive experience in developing public investment policies in technological companies, having held various positions of responsibility at the Center for Industrial Technological Development (CDTI), including Director General. Ponce is an Industrial Engineer from the Polytechnic University of Madrid and holds a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the Instituto de Empresa (IE). He began his career at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and was a laboratory manager for microelectronics in the private sector before joining the CDTI.
During its first meeting, the Governing Board also approved the initiation of two projects related to semiconductor design and manufacturing technologies, after receiving approval from the Evaluation Commission. These projects will involve a public investment close to 400 million euros and are expected to mobilize a total of 800 million euros.
The operations, to be formalized soon, will be the first public-private co-investments financed with funds from the Annex to the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan of the PERTE Chip.
The SETT is a Public Business Entity that will manage and coordinate public investments in the field of technological innovation, adapting the government’s leadership to the pace of technological and economic progress.
This is the first entity of its kind that a government has promoted in the last twenty years, with the conviction that Spain has the great opportunity to be an international protagonist in the digital transformation in a scenario where technology is already a cross-sectoral vector of the world economy.
With its creation, the government expands its capacities to address the challenge of digital transformation with an agile administrative agent. Initially, the entity will focus its management on generating synergies, unity of action, and a medium-term vision to transform the Spanish economy in a cross-cutting and structural way by incorporating disruptive digital technology in multiple sectors.
It will manage around 20 billion euros from three major funds of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR): the PERTE Chip, the Next Tech Fund, and the Spain Hub Europe Audiovisual Plan Fund.
This Spanish government initiative comes in a globalized and very complex context where in a short time, the paradigm of our country is changing with the different competitive advantages of having cheap and renewable energy, modern infrastructure, the best connectivity in Europe, and the ability to generate and attract talent.
The new society will involve high value-added technological sectors and make decisions on the presence and financing of the Spanish government in projects with stakes in strategic and disruptive technological companies. In this way, the SETT combines under one entity the financial detection capabilities of the most future-oriented sectors and the technical capabilities to analyze technological and digital trends.
The establishment of the SETT also represents a change in the action model of the administration, promoting a proactive approach to the implementation of these future sectors in the Spanish economy through public-private collaboration.
Source: MiMub in Spanish
