SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Oct. 31 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Minister of Finance of the Government of the Canary Islands, Matilde Asián, warned this Tuesday that a possible forgiveness of the debt to the autonomous communities, in the case of Catalonia, Andalusia or Valencia, would be a “catastrophe” and the archipelago would have to “fight” in defense of their interests.
In a press conference to present the 2024 regional budgets, he admitted that there are communities “that have met and others have not” with the deficit and public debt objectives and understands that if fiscal rules are recovered, debt forgiveness “would be the last straw.” “.
Along these lines, he has commented that “if there were no return to the fiscal rules, each stick holds its candle and designs its future”, and has wondered what would happen to the archipelago if communities with greater purchasing power see their debt forgiven, when they are not their own. but endorsed by the FLA.
“What does that mean if the Canary Islands are a region that receives funds due to their remoteness and insularity?”
The counselor has also said that “kicking it forward” by setting the same deficit objective for all regions “is not correct”, which is why she has defended “that the rules be asymmetrical, the Canary Islands have always complied very well and they cannot put the same rules as a non-compliant region.
He has said that the non-compliant communities claim that they are underfinanced and that is why “they go into debt ad nauseam because they cannot maintain services”, but the Canary Islands are not well financed either, with 90% of the average.
“We cannot be satisfied with these measures, we would fail to defend the general interest of all the Canary Islands,” he said.
Asián recalled that for the Canary Islands “it was very hard” to have funds removed from the 2009 reform of the autonomous system because it was considered to receive additional funds from the REF and he sees an increase in collection as the only option to reform it. “If there isn’t one, I see a change in the system as difficult,” he stressed.
