CATALONIA -- Montoro's sleights of hand with the fiscal balances - VilaWeb
Montoro's sleights of hand with the fiscal balances
Professor Marta Espasa explains how the Spanish Government experts made
the calculations in order to minimize the appearance of the fiscal
deficit
Yesterday, finally, the Spanish Government
published the public accounts, edited by economist Ángel de la Fuente,
executive director of FEDEA. According to the resulting calculations,
the Catalan fiscal deficit is reduced to 8.5 billion euros—some 4.35% of
its GDP—while, using the same methodology, the Catalan Government had
calculated that the deficit was 11 billion euros. Marta Espasa,
professor of Political Economics and Public Finance at the University of
Barcelona explains where the holes are in the Spanish Finance
Ministry's accounts.
The 8.5 billion euros of fiscal deficit
are the difference between the almost 9.4 billion euros that the State
collects in tax receipts in Catalonia and the 910 million euros that it
spends there, according to this data. The report calculated the fiscal
deficit of the autonomous communities with respect to the central
administration using the benefit approach, and they omitted using the
cash-flow method altogether. When the Catalan Government calculates the
fiscal balances, it uses both methods.
Ángel de la Fuente, in charge of calculating fiscal balance sheets for the Ministry of Finance
