Logistics sector recovery vaccination dependence revealed and supply chains face major changes, experts say  -After a 2020 full of ups and downs, the logistics sector is still waiting in 2021 for its full recovery from the crisis caused by the coronavirus. In the past 15 months, the sector has had to deal with the brake almost total your business to the confinements and restrictions of activity that affected its supply and with the sudden spike in your activity before the takeoff of e-commerce during the pandemic, becoming a key sector to combat the shortage.

Now, despite closing last year with high order volume figures, the logistics sector is trying to glimpse its future after the coronavirus, with unknowns about when it will recover the volume of employment it held before the pandemic, about the evolution of the last mile segment and about possible new disruptions in global supply chains in the face of growing demand.

On the recovery of the sector, the president of the logistics ONE employers ' association, Francisco Aranda, tells that he does not expect it to occur this year. "An economic sector recovers when employment recovers, that is, when you once again have figures of people working in the sector equal to those before the crisis broke out, and, for the moment, for this year I do not see at all that the figures of assets in the sector before the pandemic recover," he says.

In fact, according to the numbers presented by the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, the transport sector and the storage had 715.512 busy on active duty at the end of April, which represents a 3.2% affiliates more than in the same month of 2020, but a 1.9% less than the 729.344 active workers with the counted in April 2019 and is 2.13% less than the 731.050 February 2020, just before the pandemic.

In addition, Aranda believes that the main vector that accelerates recovery is vaccination. "At this time, the main economic measure that we can request is that vaccination is very fast and very massive," he says, noting that it must be taken into account that the crisis does not have an economic origin, so he believes that the solution must come first on the health front.

Logistics sector recovery vaccination dependence revealed

"Another thing is that this health crisis has accelerated transformations in which companies were immersed and a second crisis has been generated, but at this moment the most important thing is to solve the health crisis," he reiterates. Among these pandemic transformations, we must highlight the impact of digitalization and the boom in online consumption, which has aroused growing interest in the last mile segment.

In fact, a recent report by Deloitte defined the last mile as a" critical challenge " for companies in large cities and for society as a whole due to its environmental impact, since it points out that 25% of polluting gases come from transport, and the repercussions on urban congestion, in which it attributes 20% of traffic to the movement of goods.

"The hyper-emergency service and high supply frequencies have been normalized, without assuming, in many cases, the real value associated with the service provided," says the report, which highlights that consumers demand a greater volume of products and services and that logistics efficiency and transport costs reduce the profitability of many companies in the sector "to marginal levels".

Logistics sector recovery vaccination dependence revealed

For his part, Francisco Aranda agrees to attribute the boom of the last mile to drastic changes in consumer habits due to the pandemic, increasing the number of digital consumers. "We have seen 2 large groups that have grown: on the one hand, young people, who already bought online and have bought even more, and those over 45, who did not buy online, have entered this path and, in addition, they liked the experience," he says.

The president of UNO predicts that much of this increase in online consumption will continue after the pandemic and recognizes that the fact that there are more digital buyers has meant a significant change. "We have gone from being a commodity to being a competitive advantage, an added value, in the offline purchase the business ends when you pay for the product, in online the business ends when they deliver the product," he adds.

Logistics sector recovery vaccination dependence revealed: This change, in his opinion, has given "a turnaround to B2C logistics", becoming part of the customer experience. "It is aimed at the consumer individually and is causing every day there are news on how to make this segment more efficient," says Aranda, who considers that companies are in an environment of permanent uncertainty and maximum flexibility, so he has asked for less rigidity in permits for urban minihubs.

"At the same time, this is causing a need in the acceleration of flexibility in the labor market of our sector with what has happened with the so-called rider law," says Aranda, who criticizes the behavior of digital platforms. "Lately several companies have entered that decided that their business model was based on not respecting the law and what caused is unfair competition with companies that were respecting current legislation," he says.

As for the possible risks of shortages and rising inflation that several experts have warned about in recent weeks due to the increase in demand for raw materials and the volume of stocks of companies, the president of the logistics association emphasizes that supply chains never broke during the pandemic. "It's something we have to be very proud of in the logistics sector," he points out, pointing to added problems such as the temporary Filomena.

Logistics sector recovery vaccination dependence revealed: Aranda highlights that the logistics companies overcame the difficulties despite the omens that announced the shortage and attributes it to the fact that the sector had anticipated one of the great changes fostered by the pandemic. "Thanks to the fact that companies were in the process of digitalization, it has helped them to be able to establish new routes, new procedures, new processes," he says.

However, the president of UNO points out that they are detecting a process that was already registered in the US years ago. "When logistics begins to be part of the added value and especially of the strategy of companies, sometimes the means of the companies themselves are not enough and they go to the market of logistics operators to hire those services, because they are the ones who have the knowledge, means and processes necessary to deal with complicated supply chains," he explains.

"Until now we worked a lot with the just in time and now we are working with the just in case, that is, how can you help me if there is a problem in my usual supply chain, to have an alternative, a plan B, and that is strategic and they have to do it through companies that have enough experience and knowledge," he says, stressing that this is the cause of the increase in demand in the logistics sector.

Logistics sector recovery vaccination dependence revealed: However, Francisco Aranda strongly rejects that there is a risk of shortages and emphasizes that companies and distributors are looking for alternative production centers to the usual ones, which try to be close to the final consumers. "We have seen that Asia can not continue to be the great factory in the world, first because there is a dangerous strategic dependence and second because it takes 40 days to bring production to Europe and there may be some surprise," he adds.

A similar view has been expressed by Paul Donovan, UBS chief economist for Global Wealth Management, who noted in a report on Friday that "despite fears in the supply chain, goods entering the distribution chains are increasing." In addition, he acknowledges that there have been problems in parts of that chain during the pandemic, but, despite its "busy" levels of activity, Donovan denies that global distribution is at risk.

"Some investors believe that global supply chains have suffered major disruptions, that factories around the world are inactive because components have not been delivered, or that customers wait months for their orders to be delivered. Economic data do not support this. World exports and imports have skyrocketed. The world cannot have both bottlenecks that choke supply and an increase in trade," he said in his briefing.

Logistics sector recovery vaccination dependence revealed

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These are the self-employed sectors that the Tax Agency is monitoring for their use of cash

The activities carried out in the underground economy mean that the state stops entering around 270,000 million euros each year, so the Treasury wants to attack this problem from all possible points.

This is why the Tax Agency is controlling the use of cash, since it considers it a basic pillar of this type of operations, and the self-employed are currently in the spotlight.

According to the specialized website Autónomos y Emprendedores, Hacienda considers that self-employed professionals handle cash more frequently than other workers, which translates into stricter surveillance by the treasury.

Although as this same portal highlights, citing sources from the Sindicato de Técnicos de Hacienda (Gestha), not all sectors of self-employed are being monitored with the same thoroughness: hotels, restaurants, construction, real estate activities, commerce, fruit collection or repairs and reforms are the activities on which the Tax Agency is focusing the most.

The Treasury estimates that in this type of work the use of cash is much more common than in others, so it is subjecting them to a more thorough surveillance, in order to detect fraudulent behavior that harms the collection of public money.

In its General Plan of Tax Control and Customs of 2021, the Treasury states that the exchange of cash is particularly related to the underground economy, and also warns that it will closely monitor "those sectors and business models in which levels of underground economy can generate a special social perception, with special observance of the use of cash in excess of the legally established.

Finally, it should be remembered that the Plan for Recovery, Transformation and Resilience that the Government has sent to the European Commission already announces a draft law with which it is intended to prosecute fraudulent behavior.