Spain Barter Economy Wins Followers in Grip of Crisis

It's 10.30 on a chilly winter's morning in central Madrid and retailer Emanuela Scena is opening up for business. Her shop is one of several offering second-hand goods that have sprung up in Spain's capital during the economic crisis and is packed to the rafters with clothes, books, CDs and electrical equipment.

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But unlike the others, it doesn't take cash. It's part of a barter economy in goods and services that is gaining ground as the country tips into recession and already sky-high unemployment rates inch up.

Finding different ways of generating business has also inspired stores in two towns to start accepting the peseta again, encouraging customers more than a hour's drive away to root through cupboards and drawers for a currency they thought they'd surrendered for good in 2002.

"When we started (in December 2010), Spain was already in crisis. At first people didn't like the fact that everything we were exchanging was second-hand, but now they understand," Scena said.

'Abrete Sesamo' (Open Sesame) - "we liked the idea of a name suggesting Ali Baba's cave of treasures" - now gets up to 20 customers a day swapping goods for points they earn by bringing in items of their own and paying a small subscription fee.

People can also buy points just with euros, "but they're more expensive that way because we want to encourage bartering."

As a storeholder, Scena is an exception in a small but growing parallel economy that is being fuelled mainly by a clutch of websites, paid for by advertising and offering platforms for the cash-free exchange of everything from language classes and dog-walking to furniture and cars.

It has also encouraged discounting in Spain's residential property market, which collapsed in 2007 when an asset bubble burst, saddling banks with a mountain of toxic loans and making them less inclined to issue mortgages to new customers.

Protecting Cashflow

Sabino Liebana, whose company atodatinta sells printers and accessories via the web, is part of the expanding business-to-business barter community.

During 2010 he paid the 600-euro-per-month rent on his Madrid office with goods instead of money.

"It was mostly printers and inks, and a few computers," he said. "The landlord rented at the same price to me as to his other tenants. I gave my products to him at a discount, but never below the cost price."

He was happy to take the hit, he says, because it meant he could protect his cashflow better.

"Because of liquidity problems I think it (bartering) is something that will be used by more and more firms, especially in the service industry," he said, adding he'd "rather not say" how much profit he made last year on sales of 500,000 euros.

He has made around a dozen cash-free transactions in the past six months, mostly for advertising and web design work and often via Barcelona-based exchange portal acambiode.com.

Founded in Spain in 2001, the site covers most of the Spanish-speaking world plus Italy and Portugal.

Worldwide it has 310,000 clients, mostly small firms or professionals from across the business spectrum, and 2-3,000 more are signing up every month, director Jaime Martinez said.

The 67,000 Spain-based users seal around half a dozen either pure barter or part-cash deals daily worth some 5,000 euros each on average, or close to 10 million euros of business per year.

The site expanded rapidly when the financial crisis hit in 2008 and is now experiencing another growth spurt that Martinez expects to extend through the slump as more firms look to focus their cash outgoings on keeping themselves in business.

"We are seeing a lot more activity in Spain than in previous years," he said. "Bartering is another way of financing your purchases if you have liquidity problems, which means you can save your cash for more urgent matters."

One obvious issue for the government is how to keep track of barter transactions. Spain's tax office could not shed much light on how taxes were assessed but confirmed all barter transactions were liable for tax.

"The key issue is how the barter exchange is valued. Tax legislation contains very specific guidelines for the fiscal valuation of goods and services, and this is mostly based on market price," said tax office spokesman Luis Gonzalez, declining to elaborate further.

Acambiode.com's Martinez said in his business, both domestic and international transactions were taxed just as they would be if they were cash-based.

But Jose Maria Mollinedo, vice president of Spain's Gestha union of tax inspectors, admitted the barter economy was a "totally opaque market (that is) ... impossible to monitor."