The Government has only disbursed 9% of European funds in the first half of the year

The

takes pride in the fact that Spain is leading the

in Europe, despite the fact that in the first half of the year it has only made

charged to the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism funds for

of

what was budgeted for the entire year, according to budget execution data published this Tuesday by the

Of this volume of payments, 65%, some

euros have been

so that they publish their calls or tenders, the rate of execution of which is unknown as they are not made public.

This means that, in practice, the money that has truly reached potential beneficiaries - private companies or public bodies - is only

To date, Spain has received a total of

It was last Friday, July 29, when the European Commission executed the

, of

, which was added to the 19,000 million that had already been received in 2021 -9,000 as an advance in July of last year and 10,000 as the first disbursement in December.

"This is very good news that reaffirms

of the Recovery Plan in Europe," said the first vice president,

"Spain once again demonstrates that it is

(...) This Government has managed to launch the largest modernization project in Spain and we will not cease in our objective of building a country that is more socially just, more digital, more productive and greener", said the Minister of Finance,

However, the data shows that between

2022 not even

companies regret not being able to access these funds and experts warn of their little impact on the country's economic growth.

The

for this year, collected in the General State Budgets (PGE), amounted to

euros, an item that was later modified until leaving a final budget of

.

Of these, in the first half of the year, the Executive has

amounting to 14,574.4 million (

of the total), which means that permission has been given to different Administration bodies to make use of that money.

However, the volume of

-expenditure assigned to

, that is, money whose objective has already been decided- was 9,066.68 million euros (

), while

amount to 4,754.59 million (

)

Although all these items are already being processed, the State has only made

euros.

Among the projects that have already received payments, the

stands out for its amount , which has received 615 million euros.

In addition, 760.8 million have been allocated to the acquisition of

;

106 million have gone to

67 million to promote inclusive growth and the

51 million have gone to autonomous communities to

in the territory;

56 million to modernize and

and invest in R+D+i;

and 16.49 million for the National Institute of Performing Arts and Music.

No sign of "cruising speed"

Projects, in short, that

, something that worries businessmen.

"The speed of receipt of funds by Spain must be matched with

We perceive an acceleration in the publication of

pointed out

. last week in its latest report on the implementation of the funds.

They have detected that the main problems that aggravate the bottleneck are that there are

;

many companies -especially SMEs- and freelancers have

of some calls;

there is a lack of administrative agility and, lastly, there are many

for public contracts that remain

as a result of

which prevents funds from being channeled to the productive fabric.

AIReF considers that this is happening in 10% of cases.

"We have seen an increase in the pace of publication of tenders and contracts, but unfortunately we are not seeing the cruising speed to which the Government aspired, we are rather finishing off," says

, head of the

, in conversation with EL MUNDO.

He regrets that the "atomization" of the calls is one of the main problems, since "it forces companies to cut their projects into parts, interpret different regulatory bases and make different technical reports, which greatly complicates the presentation."

Only if European funds reach the real economy will they have an

.

Although the Government expected that in 2021 its impact on the advance of the Gross Domestic Product (

) would be

, the truth is that the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (

) ended up recognizing that

For

, a contribution of

was expected , but given the pace of execution, this could be much lower.

The 2,600 million that have been disbursed in the first half of this year are added to the

, bringing the total volume of Recovery Plan funds that have come out of public accounts to

of the 31,000 received to date.

In

, the Government had budgeted

of which 22,128 million were authorized.

The committed expense was 20,977 million, and the recognized obligations, 20,044 million.

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