23.07.2014 - 13:43
The fiscal balance sheets finally published by the Spanish Government today report that Catalonia’s fiscal deficit in 2011 was almost 8.5 billion euros, 4.35% of Catalonia’s GDP. The contracted experts by the Spanish Ministry of Finance presented their data taking into account only one of the two possible methods for calculating fiscal balances: the benefit approach, and they have omitted the cash-flow system. The Catalan Government used both methods when it presented its data a month ago: with the first method the fiscal deficit was 11 billion euros, with the second, 15 billion.
The fiscal deficit is the difference between the 9.4 billion euros that the State collected from Catalonia and the 910 million euros that were spent here last year. Per person, the difference between tax receipts and state spending in Catalonia is 1,119 euros per person, that is, the difference between the 1,239 that they pay and the 120 that they get back in state spending. According to this method, Catalonia has the second highest fiscal deficit, behind Madrid, which has a negative balance of 16.7 billion euros, or 2,575 per person. The other communities that register a fiscal deficit are Valencia (2 billion euros, or 2.03% of its GDP and the Balearic Islands (1.5 billion euros, or 5.71% of its GDP). The rest receive more than they pay in. Andalusia has a surplus of 7.4 billion euros, or 5.24% of its GDP.
The publication comes seven months after contracting a team of experts led by the director of the Fundación d’Estudios d’Economía Aplicada (Fedea), Àngel de la Fuente, to publish the “territorialized public accounts” instead of the fiscal balances, which, according to Montoro, were being “improperly used” by the sovereigntists.
The method used by the Spanish Government
The only method used by the ministry experts to come up with their figures was the benefit approach, which calculates the difference between the taxes collected in an area and the public spending from which the citizens in that territory have benefited. For example, the civil servants in the State’s Ministry of Education, including Minister Wert, live in Madrid and mostly spend in Madrid. Under the benefit approach, the cost of all of the ministries is considered to benefit all the people in the Spanish State. Or the Prado Museum in Madrid, which in 2013 alone received 38 million euros in State money (compared with 11 million for all cultural institutions combined in Barcelona), 25% of which is said to benefit residents outside of Madrid.
They did not use the cash-flow method which accounts for where each expense was paid. Just yesterday, Francesc Homs said that he had hoped that the Spanish Government would use both systems like the Catalan Government had done in order to calculate the fiscal balance sheets. When they did so, they concluded that that year Catalonia had sent to Madrid 15 billion euros that did not come back.
