The Government ignores AIReF and has not yet commissioned it to review spending on pandemic measures

• ALEJANDRA OLCESE

  @AlejandraOlcese

Updated Thursday, February 24, 2022-02:55

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The

promised in writing with Brussels in the Recovery Plan to enhance the evaluative role of the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (

), but in practice

and the Government has not even commissioned the review yet that must be carried out in 2022 of the expenses deployed during the pandemic.

"The new spending review process will be carried out in five phases that each cover a period of one year (...) It should be noted that

to be evaluated

whose proposals are taken into account", the Government collected in Component 29 of the Recovery Plan, in which it indicated that AIReF should review, among others, spending on "financial instruments of public support for the productive fabric".

But the truth is that the

hence it has not yet been able to draw up an Action Plan as required.

"I understand that this year, as a consequence of the speed in the deployment of the plan,

it was going to be. It has become clear that there is room for improvement in this joint and coordinated selection", its president,

, denounced this Wednesday during the presentation of the new Evaluation division.

The successor to José Luis Escrivá has admitted that

.

"We have not been able to formalize the action plan, they give us three months to do it, but the difficulty that AIReF has is that many times when the Administration does the assignment, it does not know what it wants to evaluate or to what extent.

because we are given a deadline for something that does not depend on us.

.

As they have interpreted the Plan and what was approved by the Council of Ministers, the Authority believes that it will have to evaluate the effectiveness of the

that the Official Credit Institute (

) has made available in the form of

, in line with what the ECOFIN has recommended and as other countries around us, such as France, Italy, Ireland, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, are already doing.

We demand functional autonomy and mechanisms that ensure unhindered access to data

AIReF

"Spain has opted for guarantees in this crisis and it is clear that when one compares at an international level, the muscle of public resources made available has been very high compared to direct transfers or subsidies.

", stressed

, director of the new Public Expenditure Evaluation division.

The Government is not making it easy for AIReF to do its job, in fact they have asked it to give them "

access to data ", since many times that is what they find: obstacles.

Lack of data to evaluate the IMV

Another of the measures deployed during the pandemic whose effectiveness must be evaluated is the

but they are still waiting for the Tax Agency to sign an agreement that is necessary to access the data.

"Public Administrations tend to be guarantors regarding confidentiality and the information used by AIReF has to be anonymized. For this reason, we need a three-way agreement, we need all the files of applicants from the National Institute of Social Security (INSS) but also

, in order to know the impact of the IMV on the poverty of the beneficiaries. AIReF is in agreement with the text of the agreement, but

", have explained.

The agreement should already be signed so that the authority can access the data.

In their 2022 Action Plan they had committed to presenting the report on the IMV in the first quarter, but it seems difficult for them to meet that deadline.

It must be signed now, the deadlines are running and it is important to get the first evaluation," they have pointed out.

In addition to obstacles in accessing data, AIReF has reported personnel management problems, since it has many

since they are not allowed to hire in the private sector.

As they have explained, to incorporate personnel they need to have a Public Job Offer, that the places be approved and that they be covered by officials of the Central Administration.

"

and not by civil servants. We should have the capacity to manage human resources and know what profiles we need for the evaluation. If we cannot have evaluators from

, our activity will be restricted because

", they lamented.

Beyond specific complaints, AIReF has conveyed a "

" about the use -or rather, the non-use- that the Government makes of its evaluations.

"It is common to many countries, it is not that we have a feeling that the inquiries are not being used, we believe that they are being useful. But it is a concern of the evaluation community at an international level and also in Spain. We believe that there is more evaluative capacity than evidence of the use of the evaluation findings so far. AIReF and the scientific community show things that are very useful for public policies, but

. It is a general challenge", they pointed out.

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