SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Oct. 31 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista (NC-BC) affirms that the Budget Bill of the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands (PCAC) for 2024 applies “cuts in key policies, mistreats essential public services except health and economic sectors are abandoned.”
The president, Román Rodríguez, also specified that the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (Airef) “does not endorse” the expense structure of the first accounts of the right-wing pact.
Along these lines, he emphasizes that CC and the PP “are once again programming another lie” by now saying that, in the next financial years, they will proceed to lower the General Indirect Tax (IGIC) from seven percent to five percent.
In his opinion, the bill confirms the return of cuts in fundamental policies for the Canary Islands despite being “irresponsibly expansive” accounts that incorporate 1,121 million euros of spending, 11 percent more than in 2023, “when the economy will rise two percent next year, the first signs of stagnation are given and fiscal rules are activated.
Among the ministries that have seen cuts, the president of NC-BC cited Territorial Policy, Territorial Cohesion and Water, which loses 7.73 percent while the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food Sovereignty sees its allocations reduced by one 15.60 percent.
The Canarian Employment Service (SCE), 2.64%, while the Tax Agency’s items are reduced by 1.73 percent, while the Canary Institute of Equality loses 5.79 percent and Statistics (Istac), 2.64 percent.
It also points out that the economic sectors are “mistreated” since Economy, Industry, Commerce and the Self-Employed only rises by 0.58 percent while Tourism and Employment, by 2.38 percent.
Adding the items from these two ministries, along with that corresponding to the primary sector, funds are cut to help boost the productive sectors, the person responsible for the Canarism of progress censured.
One of the most sensitive matters, that corresponding to the Canarian Housing Institute, also grows below the average, 2.27 percent and the same trend occurs with social services, which have an increase of less than five percent, as well as Education, Vocational Training, Physical Activity and Sports with 4.42 percent.
The commitment to public universities, science and innovation with culture “is in question,” stressed the leader of NC-BC, growing by five percent.
Rodríguez also says that “there is no longer a doubt that the Canary Islands laws on Education and Social Services will be breached” in addition to the commitments with the Universities of La Laguna and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria to improve their financial reality and other historical demands aimed at link academic and scientific activity.
UNIVERSITIES WILL NOT EVEN BE ABLE TO PAY PAYROLLS
“It doesn’t even give them enough to pay the salaries of the staff of the two public university entities,” he reproached.
Furthermore, it indicates that the “recklessness” also questioned by Airef of taking some 1,000 million euros to current spending is confirmed, more than 90 percent of the 1,121 million euros of increase in spending.
The president of NC-BC also says that it is “false” that the AIReF approves this budget proposal although it does agree on the structure of the income by renouncing the two-point reduction in the IGIC, which will result in an increase in collection of 17 percent.
However, the Independent Fiscal Responsibility Authority questions the quantification of the six percent spending rule, three points above the recommended three percent, notes Rodríguez.
“It is also not credible,” he reproaches, that in coming financial years they are going to reduce two points of the general rate of the main Canarian tax on consumption and services.
“They have committed electoral fraud,” he reiterates, when CC and the PP desisted from the reduction of the IGIC from seven percent to five percent in the first budgets of the “right-wing pact”, stressing that “they have once again programmed another lie “saying that it will be done in the following financial years.
