SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Nov. 3 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The president of Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista, Román Rodríguez, showed this Friday his “concern and concern” about the forgiveness of 20 percent of Catalonia’s debt included in the agreement between PSOE and ERC for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez in the face of the consequences that are open to other communities and, specifically, the Canary Islands, which requires the convening of a Fiscal and Financial Policy Council.
Rodríguez understands that the reduction, if it occurs, must be extended to all nationalities and regions, and must not only affect the Autonomous Liquidity Fund (FLA) but also the one subscribed with the banks.
Furthermore, he defends in a note that the effort made by each community in containing spending or applying fiscal policies must be taken into account.
Regarding the first of the approaches, the forgiveness of 20 percent of the debt to Catalonia, if it were applied in this way to the Canary Islands, “we would lose,” he noted.
The Canary Islands community, as of December 31, 2022, had 6,474 million euros of debt with the following structure: in loans with private financial entities, 4,436 million euros (68 percent), in securities, 750 million euros (12, 0 percent) and in the Community Financing Fund, 1,288 million euros (20 percent).
Therefore, if the 20 percent ‘reduction’ were applied only to the debt with the State, Román Rodríguez understands that the Canary Islands’ debt will only be reduced by 256 million euros – 20 percent of 1,288 million euros. — when it should over the total.
The president of NC-BC recalled that the Canary Islands have a low level of debt, in fact it is the community with the lowest debt per inhabitant – 2,856 euros per inhabitant compared to the Spanish average of about 5,000 euros per inhabitant – and the third lowest in terms of GDP per capita, with 13.8 percent compared to the average and 23.6 percent of the average of the autonomous communities as of December 31, 2022.
EXPENDITURE AND INCOME
Rodríguez pointed out that it is a matter of “enormous complexity and enormous consequences”, historically linked to the financing system, with the effort that each territory has made to adjust spending and increase income via taxes, and considered that doing so bilaterally and linear, is “completely unfair.
The leader of NC-BC proposed, faced with an issue of such relevance, “establishing a working group” within the framework of the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council (CPFF) “to seek a rigorous, objective, measurable and fair mechanism” for the forgiveness that, helping communities with high debt, “also takes into account those that have not reached those levels by adjusting spending, as was done in the Canary Islands between 2012 and 2014, or by increasing taxes as happened in the islands on year 2012”.
For Rodríguez, it seems that debt forgiveness is going to be one of the “star issues” of this investiture negotiation, and that the economic debate can be moved later, once the Government is formed, to other major issues, such as the General State Budgets (PGE) and regional financing.
“We are very concerned when addressing one of the axes of a complex, plurinational state, such as its financing and its distribution. And from NC-BC we demand to move towards a system that, necessarily, must be agreed upon by all, transparent, equitable and fair and that respects the separation of fiscal resources from the Economic and Fiscal Regime (REF), as indicated in our 2018 Statute,” he points out.
