On March 29th, the public presentation of the new Statistical Website for the Social Economy of the Valencian Community – VALESTAT took place. The event was held at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Valencia, headquarters of CIRIEC-Spain, and within the framework of the IV University Week of Social Economy, convened by CIRIEC through its ENUIES Network, which consists of University Research Centres and Institutes in Social Economy. The VALESTAT is directed by Rafael Chaves Ávila, a professor at the University of Valencia and president of the Scientific Committee of CIRIEC-Spain, and its Scientific and Advisory Board is composed of about twenty experts in Social Economy from universities in the Valencian Community.
Promoted by CIRIEC-Spain and IUDESCOOP, and based on the same methodology as CIRIECSTAT, the launch of VALESTAT aims to increase the visibility of the social economy in the Valencian Community by collecting suitable, homogeneous, and comparable data and statistics.
Twenty-five years ago, CIRIEC-Spain published its first report on the Social Economy in the Valencian Community, titled the White Paper on the Social Economy in the Valencian Community (1998). This was followed by other reports, including the most recent White Paper on Cooperativism and the Valencian Social Economy (2019) and the White Paper on the Social Economy and the Third Sector in the Valencian Community (2020). These are part of CIRIEC-Spain’s long history of developing methodologies and producing statistical studies on the social economy, both in Spain and its autonomous communities, as well as internationally. Notable among these reports are the Satellite Accounts of the Social Economy in Spain (1994, contract with the European Commission), Manual of Satellite Accounts for Cooperatives and Mutuals (2006, European Commission), Satellite Accounts of Cooperatives and Mutuals in Spain (2009, INE), Satellite Accounts of Private Foundations Serving Households and Social Works of Savings Banks (2011, FUNCAS), Special Employment Centres in Spain (2014, Fundación ONCE), and Reports on the Social Economy in the European Union (European Economic and Social Committee, 2008, 2012, and 2017).
The focus of the statistical radar used by CIRIEC-Spain in VALESTAT is the social economy as broadly agreed upon by various European Union institutions: the European Commission in its European Action Plan for the Social Economy, and international institutions such as the United Nations International Labour Conference in its Resolution 110 on Decent Work and the Social and Solidarity Economy; the representative organizations of cooperatives, mutual societies, associations, foundations, as well as the scientific community. The Law 5/2011 of March 29 on the Social Economy institutionalizes this scope similarly.
This delineation of the Social Economy at national and European levels makes it possible to successfully implement a system for collecting and producing Social Economy statistics with homogeneous methodological criteria, in line with the European System of Accounts and United Nations (ESA-2010 and SNA-2008), enabling reliable and precise comparative analyses over time, regions, and internationally on Social Economy enterprises and entities.
The Valencian Community has a vast socio-economic reality of social economy enterprises and entities, socially and economically strong, with a long historical trajectory, diversified and deeply rooted in the territory, as revealed by the latest White Papers published by CIRIEC. However, the Valencian Community's statistical information on the Social Economy and its subsectors (cooperatives, worker-owned companies, special employment centres, agricultural transformation companies, social action associations, singular entities, foundations, others) is scattered, discontinuous, heterogeneous, and sometimes not easily accessible. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a system for collecting and producing Social Economy statistics that overcomes the current deficiencies needed by public administration officials, representatives of social economy enterprises and entities, researchers, and civil society. The main objective of the Statistical Website for the Valencian Social Economy – VALESTAT is to implement a system for collecting and producing Social Economy statistics, in a repository and later in a database, that groups, cleans, and publishes in a single portal, permanently and continuously, with national accounting methodological criteria, homogeneous and comparable, the different statistics of the Social Economy in the Valencian Community.