SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Nov. 2 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The general secretary of the PSOE Canary Islands and president of the Socialist Parliamentary Group, Ángel Víctor Torres, announced this Thursday that they do not “like” the draft bill for the General Budget of the Canary Islands 2024, so they will present an amendment to the entirety.
“They are not responsible, prudent or social budgets. They are not the accounts that the Canary Islands need,” he said in an appearance before the media.
Torres considers that in social areas there is an imbalance in the distribution of resources and gives as an example the “meager” 7 million increase for Citizenship Income, “an insufficient amount” and that “clearly fails to comply” with the Social Services Law.
Added to this is a “worrying” decline in attention to Disability or in prevention and intervention programs in the area of Minors and the Family, he noted.
He also highlighted that in Education the increase is “clearly insufficient” to meet the commitments made apart from the fact that they move away from the objective of meeting 5% of GDP.
Furthermore, he stressed that there is a stagnation in scholarships and “the universities are turned their backs” with an increase of 7 million euros “when the financing framework agreed to end their historical underfunding establishes an increase of 26 million euros, As minimum”.
In his opinion, the “hacking” that has been given to sensitive areas and also in programs for the promotion of employment, for housing or in business innovation, research and economic cooperation for development is also alarming.
The leader of the PSOE Canary Islands also does not understand how, with non-financial spending increasing by 1,120 million euros, there are strategic areas whose budgets decrease, such as Agriculture, Livestock and Fishing (-24.5 million), Territorial Policy (-7, 5) or Tourism (-5.7), includes a note from the Canarian socialists.
Likewise, he highlighted that in terms of personnel expenses there is a notable increase in the salaries and wages of senior officials and temporary staff, which grows by 30% compared to 2023, creating “the fastest growing government structure in history.” with respect to the previous Government”.
THE NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR NON-COMPLIANCE
Torres has criticized that the budgets are based on a “trap” that consists of overestimating the degree of execution of non-financial spending in 2023, with “unrealistic parameters”, with the sole objective of having the highest possible non-financial spending limit in 2024, which puts the financial sustainability of the autonomous community at risk.
“The person responsible for ensuring that their budget execution forecasts are met in the current year will be the current Government of the Canary Islands. In order to have 11,000 million in budget and 1,000 million more in non-financial spending, they have to execute close to 98%. There are less than two months and that goal is unrealistic,” he added.
Another issue that puts financial sustainability at risk is that a large part of the increase in income is based on obtaining extraordinary resources derived from the 2022 settlement.
However, they are being allocated to structural spending items such as Health, which they are going to consolidate, “and that will have consequences in the immediate future.”
Regarding the fiscal packages, Torres recalled that the great measure of this Executive has been to forgive taxes for those who receive the largest inheritances and criticized that there is nothing new in the budgets that adapts to the current context and that helps families overcome the increase. of shopping basket prices or mortgages. “What there is is what we left done,” he stressed.
Torres also recalled that the budget project presented by the Government “was born of a deception” because it does not contemplate the electoral promise of CC and PP to lower the IGIC in general from 7% to 5%. “They give their voters a real slap in the face,” he added.
The opposition leader insisted that it is “a fraud” because the specific reduction that they contemplate in some products is less than the increase that they apply to others, so they will collect more.
“We are facing a Government that puts its hand in the pockets of the Canary Islands, exactly the opposite of what they said at the electoral stage,” he concluded.
