German electronics group Siemens, with a 170-strong workforce in the Basque Country currently generating 150 million euros' turnover a year, reckons on growing in the region to 2010 at double the rate of the Basque GDP. As the firm's Spanish CEO Francisco Belil explained at a press conference yesterday, growth would be based mainly on the automotive, shipbuilding steel and energy industries, together with the health technologies sector, all of which had "enormous potential." However, continued Belil, this did not mean that Siemens would be neglecting other industries, such as automation, where the group has long been a leader.

Basically what Siemens was looking to do was increase its integration in Basque industry and business. "We want to step up our contribution to the region's economic structure", insisted Belil, "help improve competitive levels in Basque companies and, in short, do our not inconsiderable bit to consolidate prospects for the future here."

Siemens has brought its entire executive team to Bilbao for the first time as a sign of what Belil describes as its "commitment to the Basque Country." While in the city, the company's CEO for Spain has had a series of meetings with top-level representatives from the business world and the local authorities, including Bilbao mayor Iñaki Azkuna.

In the framework of Siemens's strategy of stimulating its business interests through its regional delegations, the Basque Country, said Belil, clearly had a major role to play. Besides being one of Spain's most prosperous economies, the region registered major turnover in the automotive industry, the steel industry, shipbuilding, machine tools, infrastructures, energy and the environment. The group's aim was to become heavily involved in the region's more important projects, by providing technology and innovative solutions.

At present, Siemens is a leader in industrial automation and health technologies and diagnoses, numbering all the big name firms in the region, and the Basque authorities, amongst its clients, with most of which the group maintains long-standing cooperation agreements.

Examples of the links uniting Siemens and the Basque Country are to be found in the company's leading role in the regional machine-tool industry, where it has an 80 per cent market share. Furthermore, Siemens was the firm chosen to install leading-edge technology in recent landmark buildings like the city's Guggenheim Museum, the Basque Parliament and Bilbao airport.