The Treasury will publish "immediately" the data with which Catalonia wants to demonstrate its fiscal deficit of 22,000 million

Daniel Viaña Madrid

Madrid

Updated Tuesday, January 23, 2024-00:08

The Ministry of Finance is going to

publish the data “immediately”

so that regions and experts can calculate fiscal balances.

And the figures, therefore, with which Catalonia intends to demonstrate the supposed fiscal deficit of 22,000 million euros that, according to the estimates of the Generalitat, the region suffers.

Sources from the Ministry of Finance assure this, while emphasizing that in no case will they offer the figures from the scales themselves.

They will not calculate them, as they did in the past, so in the coming weeks the different calculations of the different regions will take place.

That of Catalonia is easy to advance because it is the one defended by the Catalan Executive, and given that there is no single model to carry out the balances and that the figures can be oriented towards the desired result, the Catalan independence movement will soon have its fiscal deficit at the letter based, yes, on official data.

That is what the director of the Foundation for Applied Economic Studies (Fedea), Ángel de la Fuente, who is also one of the leading experts in regional financing, stressed yesterday.

«If the Government releases the data, there will be several fiscal balances.

And we already know what the Catalan women will say

», He explained during an informative meeting organized together with the Association of Economic Journalists (APIE).

On the other hand, "if the Government itself does it, the result will have better quality, since it will have the possibility of accessing more data and, furthermore, it will not be giving up its obligation to do pedagogy," he insisted.

But this, as has already been said, is ruled out by the Treasury.

"

We will do an exercise in transparency by publishing the data

," they maintain in María Jesús Montero's department, while stating that they do not want to enter into what, without a doubt, is going to be a war of figures.

The final result of the scales depends on many variables and how many variables are interpreted.

And the publication of the data to make these calculations is one of the agreements that Junts extracted from the Government in exchange for voting in favor of the anti-crisis decrees, the result of an insistence that only shows what result they will orient themselves towards. Catalan calculations.

"Catalonia's discourse

is as if high-income citizens say that, since they pay more taxes, they want better public services

," said De la Fuente.

The Catalan region, like the Community of Madrid or the Balearic Islands, contribute more because they have more.

That is interregional solidarity, and that is what Junts and ERC want to break.

If "a drift towards an a la carte regional financing system" begins, added the head of Fedea, the State will be "deprived of the necessary resources to effectively exercise its essential functions, including that of guaranteeing social and territorial cohesion." .

And this better treatment for Catalonia would join that already presented by the Basque Country and Navarra, something to which De la Fuente also alluded.

On the one hand, he proposed the "effective participation of the regional communities in the mechanisms of leveling or interterritorial solidarity."

That is, they contribute more.

On the other hand,

"end the opacity of the system" of the quota

.

"A detailed and reasoned calculation of the valuation of unassumed burdens used to set the quota and contribution, as well as adjustments to consumption of indirect taxes, should be published, and a broad public discussion on the subject should be opened," he stressed. .

In other words: there is a suspicion that the quota is "the result of a political agreement" between the State, the Basque Country and Navarra, and not a real calculation of the cost of the services that the central government continues to develop.

But the reality is that it seems very unlikely that either of Fedea's two requests will be put into practice.

De la Fuente, who has published the special series

Food for thought: contributions to the debate on public policies

, also addressed the problems and needs of the regional financing model, which has been out of date for 10 years and which the Government wants to reform soon.

One of the first steps in this process, proposed the head of Fedea, should be the creation "of

a temporary leveling fund to complement

the financing of the CCAA that are below average."

It would be financed "with state resources that will later be integrated into the system", it would have

a cost of 3,000 million

and would entirely benefit the most underfinanced regions: 1,409 million for Andalusia, 1,148 million for the Valencian Community, another 405 million for the Region of Murcia and finally 315 million more for Castilla-La Mancha.

«This fund would complement the income of those common regime communities that are below the average for that group in terms of financing.

“It would remain operational until the reform of the regional financing model was completed,” states the Fedea document.