The Vice President of the Government understands that the price crisis “is not resolved with demagoguery or with the official gazette”
SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, March 30. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Vice President of the Government of the Canary Islands and Minister of the Treasury, Román Rodríguez, said this Wednesday that the discount of 20 cents per liter of fuel approved by the central government will be “ineffective” and in a context where he expects inflation to be high during all year.
“From here to Friday the 20 cents will have risen and it will go to the income statement of the usual, that is not resolved,” he commented in the parliamentary Treasury commission to questions from the Popular, Nationalist and Socialist groups.
Regarding the plan of measures to mitigate the effects of the war in Ukraine, he commented that he has not yet read it in detail but he is in favor of direct aid for the most affected sectors and the 10,000 million in ICO credits.
He has indicated that there is a “severe global economic problem with unknown inflation rates” that began during the pandemic and has continued with the war in Ukraine that has brought inflation on the islands to 6.8%. “There is no one who is free from this evil,” she has commented.
Thus, he commented that “this cannot be resolved with demagoguery or with the official bulletin”, while admitting that high inflation can “compromise” the rate of economic growth in the archipelago.
In this context, he has pointed out that “palliative and selective measures can be taken” but he understands that the only way to get prices to fall is to “intervene at the source” which is why he has recognized that the European Council “has below expectations.”
Rodríguez has insisted that the electricity market “is rigged”, with companies that “earn billions without lifting a finger” and underlining that “how can it be explained” that the megawatt hour goes from 45 to 550 euros in a year and drops to 270 for the expectation of an intervention.
“It is a manipulated, interested market, and the Spanish conservatives do not say a peep, or we intervene in the results of those companies or there will be no ability to act on prices,” he added.
The vice president has criticized the “demagogic and inefficient recipes” of the Spanish and Canarian right that “not even documented liberal people recommend them” for which he has defended the selective lowering of taxes, such as the zero rate of the IGIC for sanitary material and for people affected by the volcanic eruption in La Palma or the 99.9% discount on fuel tax for transporters and workers in the primary sector.
“We are not going to make generalized reductions, they are more of a problem than a solution,” he pointed out.
Likewise, he has indicated that “it is irresponsible to demonize taxes”, something that “the very ignorant” or those who have “unspeakable interests” do, and it is a “dangerous discourse” when “the only ones who have covered themselves with public money have names and surnames”.
In this sense, he has said that it is time to promote collection through the Canarian Tax Agency with more “complicity” on the part of taxpayers, generating “tax awareness and increasing personnel, where he has admitted” difficulties “in providing the staff.
Likewise, he has said that “the REF must be valued”, since it is not only the RIC or the ZEC, since there is a tax differential “which is very important and nobody has” and that allows applying 0% of the IGIC 94% of consumers of electricity or fuel.
THE GOVERNMENT “HAS NOT DONE ANYTHING AT ALL”, ACCORDING TO THE PP
Fernando Enseñat, from the Popular Group, has pointed out that the “nonsense” of the rise in prices began a year ago, not as a result of the invasion of Ukraine, a few “months of bleeding” with fuel, basic products and light and against whom the Government “has done nothing at all”.
He has even commented that “the only measure”, that of increasing the fuel tax credit, was proposed by the PP in the ‘Debate on the State of Nationality’ “and they rejected it”.
In this sense, he has requested the reduction of the general rate of the IGIC, the fuel tax, the inheritance and donations tax and the regional section of the IRPF, measures that he considered “essential” and that are the fastest to notice the drop in prices. .
Enseñat has said in the Government of the Canary Islands that “they have always said no” to lowering taxes “not to protect services but because of inflation they are swelling to collect taxes”, giving as an example that last December IGIC collection reached 147 million, the highest since 2017 and 47 million more than the previous year.
Rosa Dávila, from the Nationalist Group, has indicated that the measures included in the central government’s plan “are insufficient” since the reduction in port taxes does not include ships leaving from the Peninsula, there is no mention of fuel in the ‘islands green’ and the reduction in airport taxes leaves out inter-island transport.
He has also pointed out that the central government “is not very sensitive” to the Canary Islands in the response plan to the war and has claimed that the subsidy for the cost of transport is “out of date” because in some cases “it has risen up to 400%”. “It is urgent to adopt specific measures for the Canary Islands”, he stressed.
Iñaki Lavandera (PSOE) has said that the Canary Islands are reflected in the plan of measures against war and censorship that “the right does not provide any solution” when public spending is what has made it possible to face the effects of the pandemic and now it will the same with those of war.
For this reason, he has asked Rodríguez to “put the general interests ahead” and move away from the “populist” criteria of the opposition because “in difficult times” the protection of governments becomes more necessary.
AUTONOMOUS FINANCING
Regarding the reform of the autonomous financing system, the vice-president has said that it is a “strategic” matter and it is convenient to close a “great agreement” between all the parties in which the REF’s resources are “unequivocally” excluded, which are for compensate for economic development and not cover basic services.
Likewise, he stressed that the Government has already presented its allegations to the draft of the Ministry of Finance in which it promotes that insularity does not lose weight and that the poverty index be taken into account for the calculation of services.
Dávila has pointed out that the draft of the new system harms the Canary Islands because “it puts it in the queue” in the financing of essential public services, for which he has urged all political forces to “not take a step back”.
Along these lines, he pointed out that “it was a very important achievement” to disassociate the REF from the system because it allowed access to the funds for sufficiency and competitiveness and “it was anchored” in the new Statute of Autonomy, so “there should be no doubt ” in the new system.
