The Ministry of Finance, Budgets and European Affairs of the Government of the Canary Islands yesterday sent the central Executive the assessment of damage caused by the volcanic eruption on La Palma, which stands at 842.33 million euros so far. A provisional amount due to the fact that the outcome of the catastrophe on the Island is unknown.
The Canarian vice president and head of this department, Román Rodríguez, explained yesterday that the report includes the damage caused to public and private property, in addition to the intervention costs of the autonomous administration, and of the Cabildo and the palm city councils. However, the European Union Solidarity Fund can only subsidize 2.5% of the total damage produced, although the aid can only be used for the repair or rehabilitation of public goods and services.
Given that these restrictions cause the contribution of the Solidarity Fund to be “clearly insufficient”, Rodríguez urges the Government of Spain and the Spanish MEPs to “demand other additional sources, exceptional funds that really contribute to financing a reconstruction plan for La Palma , in view of the fact that the Solidarity Fund establishes very limiting conditions that show that it was not conceived for situations such as a volcanic eruption ”.
The balance of damages sent to the Ministry of Finance does not include expenses attributable to the General State Administration. Precisely, the ministries of the Government of Spain will add their own evaluation in the final file that they will send to the European authorities for inclusion in the Solidarity Fund.
The evaluation contains a detailed list of the damage caused by the eruption, in which the largest blocks are damage to road infrastructure, for 228 million euros; the destruction of banana plantations and associated production losses, for about 200 million euros; or the destruction of buildings, with l65 million euros.
Rodríguez insisted on the particularity of the volcanic phenomenon in the face of other types of catastrophes or emergencies and stressed that it “has not yet finished, so the damage assessment is likely to be increased.”
The balance has been processed by the Subdirectorate for Management of European Funds of the Ministry of Finance and the report will now be completed with the economic evaluations of the ministries and sent by the Spanish Department of Finance to the European Union. On this, the vice president recalled that, to benefit from the European Solidarity Fund in its regional catastrophe modality, the damage produced must be greater than 1% of GDP, something that is true in this case. The Ministry of Finance is studying the possibility of requesting the Government of Spain to process an advance, which in any case would be limited to 25% of the aid from the Solidarity Fund.
With the balance of damages so far and in accordance with the regulations, La Palma could receive from this Fund some 20 million euros, although the European Commission is already formally aware that the eruption is continuing and that the amount, therefore, is not definitively closed.
On the other hand, the delivery of aid to those affected by the La Palma volcano is accelerating from the Canary Islands administrations. The Cabildo Palmero has already delivered donations to a thousand families while keeping the belongings of more than 250 homes affected by the volcano in a safe place. It has also paid an aid of 80,000 euros to farmers who have been displaced and has opened the deadline for university, vocational or postgraduate students to request aid to compensate for the damage that the volcano may have caused them.
Thousands have already received the donations that have come from all the Islands and the Peninsula. For this reason, the president of the town hall of La Palma, Mariano Zapata (PP), thanked yesterday the enormous effort, involvement and responsibility of each and every one of the hundreds of workers and volunteers who have collaborated in the management of the warehouses enabled to welcome donations. At the same time, the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries of the Cabildo de La Palma has already paid the emergency aid that it activated to collaborate with the livestock farms that have been affected by the eruption. The insular head of the primary sector, Manuel González, specified that these aids amount to a total of 80,000 euros.
