• Data of the Treasury. The carousel of elections had a cost of 448 million for the public coffers
  • It will not fall below 2% of GDP. The Government admits that it will fail to meet its own softened deficit target

The Government of Pedro Sánchez is unable to tackle the public deficit. Despite its "commitment to stability" and having repeated on many occasions that one of its priorities is to contain the budgetary deviation, the data seems to insist on saying otherwise. And a good example of this is that, at the end of the third quarter, the deficit not only did not reduce with respect to last year but also shot up by almost 3.8 billion euros .

According to the budget execution figures published yesterday by the Ministry of Finance, the deficit to September, which is the last month of which data are included that include local corporations, amounted to 18,386 million, which represents 1.47% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), while in the same period last year the figure was slightly below 15,000 million (1.21% of GDP).

With these figures, the department headed by María Jesús Montero certifies, as was foreseeable, that it will be impossible to meet the 1.3% deficit target that the Mariano Rajoy government agreed with Brussels. Likewise, it does not seem feasible that Spain closes the year at 1.8% that the Minister of Economy, Nadia Calviño, renegotiated as soon as she reached office, and something similar happens with the self-imposed figure of 2% announced by Montero. In fact, so much so that sources of the Executive already recognize that it is very unlikely to close the year with this two-point deviation.

The publication of the Treasury also includes the public deficit as of October without taking into account the town halls, and in this case the deviation is moderated slightly to 1.41%, which could suggest a certain improvement in the negative trend. However, if this data is compared with that of 2018, the result is even worse: last year, the figure was 1.08%, which represents an increase of 35% .

In spite of all this, the Treasury tries to emphasize that the deviation of the State has been reduced. On this occasion, the data is offered updated until November -which helps to generate some confusion since it adds a third temporary reference-, and effectively includes a reduction of the deficit in this area of ​​Public Administration although, at the same time, it represents a notable increase over the previous month.

In any case, the figure is very marked by the bad data of tax collection and, especially, by the collapse of the contributed by the figure of Societies. " The collection of Corporate Income Tax amounts to 19,779 million, 9.9% less than in 2018 ", explains Hacienda, which blames this situation "on the fall of fractional payments of Large Companies and consolidated groups, while fractional payments SMEs have grown 15.4% over the previous year ».

Finally, the Treasury document shows another very relevant circumstance and that has a significant weight in the worrying deficit data: the autonomous communities accumulate a deviation of 4,428 million (0.35% of GDP), which contrasts with the surplus 1.632 million last year. Thus, only the Canary Islands, Navarra, La Rioja and the Basque Country remain in that situation, while the rest of the regions have negative numbers.

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Know more

  • Nadia Calviño
  • Maria Jesus Montero
  • Public deficit

It will not fall to 2% of GDP The Government admits that it will fail to meet its own softened deficit target

Forecasts The Bank of Spain warns: the Government will barely reduce the deficit and unemployment stagnates

The Valencian Community accumulates almost a third of the regional deficit